Sword Stone Table

by Sword Stone Table- Old Legends, New Voices (retail) (epub)

  In his last memory with Manav, they’d all been together at a party in Marseilles II, and Manav had seemed his usual self—a little reserved and then bitingly funny. He could be utterly ruthless with a joke, but it was never a sign he was cross. Just that he liked presenting his jokes in the manner of a proud chef. And then he was just gone, the cruelest surprise joke of all. It didn’t make any sense until Gavin remembered how, with closeted men, you always had to prepare for them to vanish from your life one day, without even so much as a goodbye.

  Maybe he’d joined the Witches of Two Moons?

  Competitors at the party stood out because they often wore helmets or headbands that helped cushion the shock of a blow. Only a few wandered around in shock-absorbent armor, and no one, it seemed, had been dumb enough to wear rabbiters—boots with carbon fiber fins and pressure jets that let them bounce up the sides of Martian hills and mountains in huge strides, or even fly short distances. When you hit your stride on a flat plain’s straightaway with them on, it was like being a human bullet. But in a landscape like Valles Marineris, you had to dance with the ground. If you got it right, you were like the wind itself. If you got it wrong, a scrap in the storm.

  Was that what happened to Manav? But if he was dead, his colony’s careful telemetry records would have recorded him as such. Unless he died out of reach of the signal.

  “Hello, King!” the doorman at the entrance to the VIP lounge greeted Arturo, waving them in. They approached the bar, and every step of the way, Arturo received that reception. Gavin felt ignored in the way he preferred—though certainly he was also being examined. Gemma, meanwhile, looked like she belonged with Arturo. French Vietnamese Martian, hair swinging in a chic bob with bangs, she had the cool unimpressed strut of a veteran soldier, clearly up to the job of ignoring the way she was being studied by this crowd.

  If Arturo’s fans called him King, it was probably because they’d seen Gemma do it. The first King Arthur jokes—el rey Arturo—were hers. If Gavin was popular with viewers back on Earth, he could only imagine how much they loved her. Although, King felt imperfect; Arturo was more of a prince, a handsome young Mexican Martian man with a beautiful profile, thick dark curly hair, and lips that gleamed as if sculpted and polished. A deep mellifluous voice emerged from him even when he was being ridiculous, and it had, if Gavin was honest, given him a shiver from time to time in their years as friends. He remembered Arturo showing him the holographic crown that producers sometimes flicked on, digitally hovering over his head as he said whatever his new catchphrase was that season. Gavin suspected this season’s catchphrase was their running joke—“best friends do this to each other”—because Arturo kept saying it.

  Gavin stood in what he’d call a contrast to his friends. He was about a foot taller, redheaded and pale, prone to freckling if his skin ever saw any sun. His features were thicker, but he knew he had his own appeal and was proud of it. He’d never seen Riviera Mars, and he tried not to think about it. But still, he often caught himself wondering if certain footage would make the cut.

  This absolutely will, Gavin thought as they found themselves at last in the presence of their diminutive hostess.

  Ásdís wore her hair in a straight black bob that was like the butch cousin of Gemma’s haircut. She had thick glasses—an affectation, truly, in 2052—and was dressed for the evening in a red jumpsuit with gold racing stripes on the sleeves and pant legs. A remarkable tiara made of massive opals sat cocked on her head like a baseball cap.

  “I’m so happy you’re here,” Ásdís said. She punched Arturo’s shoulder like they’d been in the service together. “It’s the king! We can get started.”

  “Started…with the party?” Gemma asked in the way Gavin knew meant her contempt for the situation was overcoming her.

  “With the performance.” Ásdís tilted her head at Arturo, and in return Arturo gave her a sly grin. She giggled. Gavin found Gemma’s eyes waiting for his own. They’d been had. This was a scripted bit; he was sure of it. The coldness that had been chasing Gavin plunged through him, down to his feet. He turned away from Gemma, and the two of them looked to the figure of their friend ahead, just barely in sight following along behind Ásdís, her opal tiara flashing softly by his elbow.

  They reached the beak of the Raven. “Hello, everyone!” Invisibly miked, Ásdís’s voice traveled easily across the assembled crowd. “Thank you for coming to the Mudder Ball! We have a very special guest here tonight. Please give a welcome to Mars’s own King Arturo!” She pulled up his hand in hers, in a gesture of victory.

  When had they met? Gavin wondered. Beside him, Gemma had also obviously noted Arturo’s intimacy with Ásdís and was clearly sulking. Was she jealous? Besides Arturo, Gemma was one of the true beauties Gavin knew. She carried herself with the sort of confidence Gavin was sure he had never once felt. Ásdís ought to be jealous of her, he figured. Quite a few people had tried for Arturo’s affections over the years, and not one had truly defeated Gemma.

  Gemma drank deeply from her glass and leaned in to whisper to Gavin again. “I think I just spotted our mysterious green man. Seems like we could have saved the fuel and just waited to find him in the crowd.”

  Suddenly breathless, Gavin followed her gaze, looking down. “He’s even still wearing his helmet,” she said as his eye trailed along the crowd, searching for the gleaming green he soon found.

  There he was. Even helmeted, it seemed like the man in green was looking right at Gavin: staring up at him as if waiting for Gavin to notice he was there.

  * * *

  —

  Arturo and Gavin had been in Gavin’s shuttle with their friends Dorn and Khal, on their way to pick up Gemma, when Gavin saw—he’d swear it—a man on the side of Olympus Mons. And not just any man. A green man.

  After they’d collected Gemma, Gavin tried to explain. She’d turned her sharp, perceptive eyes on him and, in the lazy way of talking she had, like maybe you weren’t worth her whole sentence, asked, “So you found a true Martian?”

  “We are the true Martians,” Arturo said, and wagged his eyebrows.

  Gavin flushed. “I just…I thought I saw a man. Or maybe just a light. Coming off the mountain. Arturo couldn’t see it. I’m probably just imagining things, or maybe I just need to clean my visor. But it isn’t urgent. We don’t have to go look for it.”

  “We’ll go,” Arturo said consolingly. “It’s no big deal. It’s even sort of on the way to the party. And what if you did see something?”

  “I don’t want to be late,” Gemma said ominously.

  “You worry too much.” Arturo was looking at Gavin, and he felt embarrassed, sheepish now. “We’ll fly by and see what we see,” Arturo said. “Maybe try and get some readings.”

  With Arturo’s urging, Gavin cranked the Dodge Starsong—what his mother called the station wagon of space shuttles—into action.

  On the first pass, no one saw anything, not even Gavin. His embarrassment grew on the second pass—nothing again—until he was simmering with it. By the end of the third pass, Gemma was hooting with laughter. Then her breath caught and she let out a little yip. “I see it! I mean, I see him!”

  “Very funny,” Gavin said, catching her eye in the rearview mirror.

  “I swear! One more pass!” she commanded. “See if you don’t see it,” she told Arturo, who was rolling his eyes.

  “There’ve been no readings out of the ordinary,” Gemma said, looking at the scanners in the back. “No particular radiation or temperature variations, nothing to even indicate a life-form.” The shuttle, a battered black-and-yellow passenger model more suited to cargo, with racing stripes and flames he and Arturo had added years ago, was equipped with sensors standard to all Martian vehicles, even sport vehicles. Every vehicle was technically an explorer here.

  But on this pass, Gavin saw him again, sharper now. Undeniably a man. Dresse
d in a green Mudder uniform, with the boots of a racer. But green was not a standard color for the uniforms Gavin knew—no team ever wanted to open themselves up to being called the Little Green Men.

  In general, the colonists ranged from being conservative about speculating as to the possibility of “real” Martians to inventing just about any possible version of life on Mars. More than a few had signed on to the possibility that other life-forms were here, but it was a little or a lot like believing in God. And the more the colonists dug into the cold planet—it was geothermally dead inside—the more they found evidence of previous life: old deposits, or traces that were suggestive and even definitive but not inarguably indicative of intelligent life. No mission had yet discovered any sign of an ancient civilization, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. And it didn’t mean some people wouldn’t try to act as if they had. By now the consensus among colonists was that if there was life, it would be at the planet’s center. That the warmest place on Mars, or at least the most sheltered, might be the core. And Gavin did find that interesting, but it also made him wonder why no one had ever gone down that far. And if anyone ever would.

  The consensus on Earth was that whatever was here was dead, long dead, and had been lost to whatever ancient cataclysm came after the planet went cold. Mars could feel like a vast and unforgiving crypt, refusing their attempts to know who or what was inside it. And sometimes, at night, in bed, Gavin could swear he felt the vast coldness of it touch him, a cold that never quite let him feel warm.

  What could possibly snuff out the heart of a planet? And: What if whatever killed the planet was still down there?

  Nothing that could be confused for old Earth assumptions about Little Green Men, that was for sure. It was embarrassing even to think about.

  The man in the green Mudder uniform seemed to rouse from a sleep at the sight of the shuttle hovering in the air above him. He stretched broadly, then, with a practiced turn, sprang up the side of Olympus Mons in a series of leaps, disappearing into the mouth of a cave there. Gavin shivered inside his carefully calibrated protective armor.

  “Who the fuck is that,” Gemma asked.

  “Do we think he’s okay?” Dorn asked from the back.

  “He’s going the wrong way for the party,” Khal said. “Almost like us!”

  Arturo shook his head. “He didn’t ask for any help. He’s fine. Let him go. We’ve got shit to do!”

  And so off they went.

  Now they were here, and the green man, it seemed, had followed them.

  * * *

  —

  Before Gavin could react to the sight of the man in green below him, Ásdís clapped her hands. “In honor of our king, this evening we shall have an Arthurian-themed challenge,” she announced. “The Green Knight demands a duel!”

  Gavin startled at the all-too-uncanny coincidence, even as he struggled to recall the details from the legend of King Arthur, which, judging by the reaction, many in the crowd seemed to recognize.

  “Who will be our king’s champion?” Ásdís continued. “Who is your Gawain, Arturo?”

  Arturo looked slyly off to one side before saying, “There could be only one. And he’s right there.” Then he pointed at Gavin.

  Gavin’s look of stupefied surprise—he was staring at Arturo in shock—of course only fed the cheers and laughter.

  “Will you be my champion?” Arturo asked Gavin.

  Ah.

  The crowd drew quiet as they waited for his answer. Gemma’s face stood calm, even amused, as he blinked and looked around. Yes, he loved his friend, would…do anything for him. Even this? he asked himself. But he already knew the answer, already felt his head nod, his agreement offered, at once an affirmation and a self-betrayal.

  There was a game he could see and another he couldn’t, and he would play them both.

  * * *

  —

  The rules were simple: Gavin and this Green Knight of Ásdís’s would have to find and confront each other in the volcano’s network of caves—a duel to disarmament, each wearing a body camera so the Mudder Ball could watch. They would be alone in the raw, undeveloped space, untouched by the colony’s artificial atmosphere. The chambers had been temporarily sealed off to everyone else.

  Outfitted in his armor and rabbiters, retrieved earlier than expected from the party’s coat check, Gavin traversed the dark caves, listening for sounds, looking for lights. He was alert for signs of footprints, signs of some disturbance. He explored the first cave, one known to him from childhood, from before Ásdís bought Olympus Mons and built her colony. From there he proceeded into the parts of the cavern system he was unfamiliar with. The network was deep, even deeper than he remembered. It descended many stories, in steps that almost looked as if they were carved by someone, yet what Gavin had always loved about the caves was their placid, unhaunted feel. As if they had been abandoned even by ghosts.

  When he failed to spot any signs of life, Gavin tried in his own limited way to sense if someone was there. It was something Gemma had gotten him into; she believed everyone was psychic. It was such a silly little experiment that he felt self-conscious and at last turned back, convinced he’d wasted his time, embarrassed himself on camera. That was when he felt, just before he saw, the green man.

  Gavin almost felt more surprise that his intuition was right than he did at seeing the man sitting cross-legged at the bottom of the stairs, as if meditating. A strange and familiar intensity radiated off him. His pose was so calm, but his body, up close now, was also strangely familiar.

  He sat like Manav. Just like Manav had.

  “Manav?”

  The green man didn’t nod or otherwise acknowledge that as his name.

  Gavin tried signing hello to him, asking him his name, in case that was his preferred mode. Nothing.

  “You get one,” the green man finally said to Gavin in English. The voice was unfamiliar. The spell dissipated.

  “One what?” Gavin asked.

  “One hit.”

  “I don’t want to hit you.”

  “You do. I’m in between you and your exit. Anyone would hit me.”

  “I just want to know who you are.”

  “That’s not on offer. One punch. One strike. One savage kick. I won’t stop you.”

  Gavin knew guys who went looking for fights, but never like this.

  “What is your fucking deal?”

  The green man stood. He held out his hands, walking closer.

  “One punch. On me.”

  And, with a savagery that shocked him, Gavin did as he said and let it fly.

  It was considered bad form to punch someone anywhere near their helmet. It marked you as a killer; it was a lethal strike, pretty much, to knock someone’s helmet off on Mars. Helmetless, you wouldn’t die immediately, but you wouldn’t last long. The crunch when Gavin’s fist connected with the green man’s helmet was like nothing he’d ever felt, but worse was the shock of the man’s head flying off, and then worse still was looking and not seeing a head. At all.

  And then the headless green man walked over to his helmet and reattached it as calmly as if he’d dropped a hat.

  “Now I get my turn” came the man’s voice as the helmet-head settled back onto his neck.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I get my turn. One punch. The same way.”

  Gavin shook his head. This was insane.

  “All right. I’ll give you time to prepare. Meet me in a day, in the Green Chapel. Or I’ll come find you. You and your king. And you won’t like it.”

  Gavin had never known he could hate someone so much, someone he’d never met. He said nothing more, just slammed the booster jets in his boots, and as he lifted off, going up the stairs and accelerating away, he heard the laughter of the green man following him.

  * * *

>   —

  Arturo and Ásdís applauded him upon his return and led the crowd in more of the same. Only Gemma’s hands were still. Gavin waited for Arturo to pick up on his distress, his discomfort, but Arturo merely patted him on the back and said his catchphrase toward one of the invisible cameras. “Best friends do this…”

  “You can spend the night here, of course,” Ásdís was saying. “And tomorrow we’ll take you up to the Green Chapel.”

  That name again—she knew what it meant? She must have seen the look on his face. “That’s what we call my conservatory. On the roof of my palace.”

  “Oh,” Gavin said, but Ásdís was already turning back to the crowd with Arturo.

  “Until tomorrow,” she told them. Gavin didn’t look at the partygoers directly—he didn’t want to see all those faces—but he still felt them watching intently, rapt. Just like the audience back on Earth would be.

  Later, after more merriment that Gavin merely floated through, a member of Ásdís’s staff led him to the promised chamber. He tried to sleep, but his brain kept cycling; he couldn’t shake the suspicion that Manav was the green man, despite the unfamiliar voice. Manav had a body like that; Gavin knew it well enough. But if the green man was Manav, how had he come by a suit that could apparently hide his life-form readings from scans? And how did he get involved in this stunt with Ásdís? It was totally out of character—just like his disappearance.

  The vision of the green man’s head bouncing across the ground returned. How calmly he had reattached it. It was impossible. But it wasn’t: not if it was a robot body. A synthetic body. One that just happened to be exactly like Manav’s.