When we had left the confines of Shklovskii, by a wayward route I could never repeat even if I could remember it, there was time for more talk. But my companion, curiously, had become almost uncommunicative. At first he grunted at my questions, and then ignored them. We were on what looked to be a little used road, roughly paralleling a main thoroughfare a good half kilo to our left. I could see knots of travelers passing both ways there, and the occasional flash of a red shirt, which explained our slow progress through this trail of muck and gullies. In the distance, growing ever taller, was the silhouette of another town with the same basic outlines as the one we had abandoned.
“Answer me something,” my riding companion said, long after I had given up any hope of discourse.
“Yes?”
“Would you hesitate to kill Frane, the leader of the F’rar, if she stood before you now?”
Without thought I said, “No.”
He nodded. “And tell me this. Would you hesitate to do the same to the so-called Queen in whose name the rebels fight?”
I went cold. “But she is dead.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is she? It is rumored that your late companion was charged with killing her, and did not do the job. The F’rar produced a body, but I happen to know it was not who they said it was. The real body was never found. In any case, the rebels still fight in her name, even though the F’rar claim she is in the afterlife.”
“I know nothing of this.”
His eyebrow was raised again. “Is that so? Do you mean to tell me you traveled with Hermes, and yet knew nothing of his charge?”
“Hermes was a traitor to his people. My people.”
“Ah.” He reined his horse around to face me. We had stopped in a stretch of woods, thin white hinto trees whose pale pink leaves waved lazily in the faint breath of wind. I had already reached for my blade and held it in my right paw, against my side. My companion bore no weapon that I could discern, but I had no reason to believe his intentions were good.
“Perhaps the time for talking has passed,” I said, fingering the blade nervously.
He looked surprised. “Oh? I had gathered it has just started. I just want to know where we stand.”
“We stand nowhere. I will take my spices and leave.”
He gave a graveled laugh. “That is the only thing I cannot let you do. We will trade mounts, if it comes to that, and you will ride off unmolested. But your spices, especially the more...exotic ones, must go with me.”
“You mean the chemicals?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Yes.”
“Who are you?”
“I am called Newton.”
The name meant nothing to me, and he seemed surprised that I did not know who he was.
“You do not know of Newton of Sagan?”
“I’m afraid not.”
His entire manner seemed to relax. His smile softened. “That is a good thing. Then perhaps you are who you say you are.”
“Yes, perhaps.”
“How did you come by these spices, then?”
“Hermes laid a trap for my people, with the F’rar, in Meridiani Pass. I got away and hunted him. Then I stole his mount.”
“You didn’t kill him yourself?”
“I had my chance. But I knew the F’rar would do it for me.”
“By the way, what are you called? The registry at Pavin’s foul hole called you ‘Ransom.’”
“That will do.”
He nudged his horse around and rode on, pacing me. He was silent again. We broke out of the little copse of trees and into a wilder expanse of sand and mire, with few bushes between ourselves and the main road. He didn’t seem concerned.
Suddenly he drew up short and reined his horse to the right. I followed, though I could see no reason. The ground looked the same – broken and marshy.
“You didn’t see the quicksand?” he asked me.
I shook my head.
“Well, we’ve now determined that you’ve never been this far north before.”
“True.”
Again he was silent, and I watched the city of Sagan rise before me. The road to our left drifted off that way toward a distant gate. Our own progress led us wide of the town, flanking it.
From here the city looked exactly like its twin: dark, decrepit, with low buildings and a half-guarded wall.
We soon came to a break in the wall surrounded by debris. My companion ignored it and we rode on.
“It’s not much farther,” he explained, without so much as turning to look at me.
We passed more rubble on the outskirts of the city, some of it curious. I saw a field of huge rusted tubes, and another of strange, abandoned machinery – boxes and gargantuan spools of cables and a veritable mountain of delicate looking glass cylinders of various colors, collecting dust under the gloomy sky.
“One of our storage areas,” Newton said cryptically. “What is the phrase? Best hid in plain sight.”
I could not imagine what use anyone would have for this field of junk.
So abruptly that I almost ran my horse into his, Newton turned into a hole in the wall. Not a hole so much as a cut, with a low ceiling of crumbling brick that caused me to lower my head almost to my saddle. The wall was thick, nearly two meters, and as I passed through I heard Newton chuckle in front of me.
“Don’t fear – those bricks over your head were assembled to look dangerous. They’re as solid as the rest of the wall. F’rar and others unfriendly to us don’t like to poke their noses into openings like that.”
I came out the other side and found my host waiting for me. We were in a tunnel little wider than the wall opening. It would be impossible to get two horses abreast here, and a raiding party would have to enter one man at a time.
As we went on at a slow canter, Newton called back, pointing overhead: “You will notice the slits at the top of the wall. Unwelcome visitors would be met with a nasty surprise.”
There were openings that looked like darkened windows along the corridor, and I asked Newton about them.
“We are being watched,” he said simply.
After a quarter of an hour, the narrow tunnel suddenly ended. I saw that a long, narrow pit extended in front of Newton’s horse. He waited patiently, and now I heard a rumble which became insistent.
A platform rose into place, and the pit disappeared, leaving a smooth metal floor which conveyed us to a door.
“Beyond this door you become a member in standing of the Science Guild. Hermes was such. You will not have full rights, but you will know enough about us that you would be a danger to us. If you agree to enter, you also agree that there is only one way to leave the Guild.”
“Feet first?” I quipped.
Newton smiled. “I will use that phrase in the future. I was going to say by old age. Soler will enjoy your wit.”
He studied me closely. “Do you agree?”
I nodded. “I agree.”
“Very well.”
Without Newton’s insistence, the door opened with a clang, and we were led into a cavernous room filled with more noise than I had ever heard in my life.
Twelve
That I was welcomed with grand ceremony would be an understatement. Or, at least, my horse was. A gaggle of faces and many hands reached for us with excited voices as we entered the room, calling the horse by name (which I did not know), Standard, stroking his muzzle, feeding him oats, and stripping him bare of every package, parcel and bundle. Only my private effects in the saddle bag remained. In a matter of minutes I stood feeling naked, my mount showing himself to be the ugly pack horse he was, now contentedly munching on a bag of grain which had been secured to his muzzle. The packages were carried off with triumphant cries of “Ooooh” and “Ahhh!” but one figure stayed behind to study me.
Newton, who had sat on his own mount through all this with an amused look on his features, bowed slightly toward the figure and then toward me.
“Soler, meet Ransom. Ransom, Soler.”
“So pleased to meet you!” Soler said in a high, almost wheezing voice. She sounded genuinely pleased. A pair of spectacles hung around her neck on a piece of twine, and she absently drew them up onto her nose, squinting at me through them. She was stout and broad-faced, with a long mane brushed back away from her pinched features.
She reached a sudden paw up and shook my own.
“Welcome!” she said.
“Ransom has been informed of her status,” Newton reported.
“Excellent! Are you hungry? Do you require a meal?”
“We ate at the Eagle, in Shkovkii,” I said.
She laughed, almost a cackle, and the glasses dropped back down around her neck. She turned and clapped his hands. “Then you definitely require a meal! Luther!”
A short, dark cat appeared, hunched over, almost walking on all fours. He had a dour disposition.
“Make a luncheon for our guest and for Newton. Come to think of it, I’ll join them also. I haven’t eaten since–”
“Since your last meal forty minutes ago,” Luther said in a desultory way. He turned, shaking his head, and slouched off.
“We shall dine in my office!” Soler announced, and we moved off through a sea of milling workers split into teams. The cavernous floor of the complex was roped off, literally, into what seemed to be work areas. Each had one or more benches and tables covered with bizarre instruments or machines. A spray of sparks went into the air at a distant table, and there was a groan followed by a hoot of pleasure. The place was unbearably noisy.
As we made our way through this madness I looked up: the ceiling was crisscrossed with catwalks and electric lamps. There were duct openings, and a thin line of windows at the very top of each wall. Somewhere a generator hummed.
With a start, I realized that some of this equipment was very similar to what I had seen in the ruins the Mighty had taken me to.
“We’re underground...?” I said out loud.
“Of course!” Soler shouted above the din. “Only way to keep things hidden!”
Suddenly the noise went down and then almost disappeared as Soler ushered us into a dark stuffy little room and slammed the door behind us. The space was cluttered with boxes and shelving and papers –
– and books of the Old Ones – on a bottom shelf beneath two crammed shelves of more petite, smaller feline volumes!
There was an entire row of them, ten at least, with binding of different colors, behind the desk where Soler now sat. She told Newton and I to sit also, and as there were no chairs I followed Newton’s lead and cleared a crate of piles of papers and used it to sit.
Almost immediately the door opened, letting in noise and Luther, who bore a tray as if it would break his back.
He complained constantly as he served us, then was gone, leaving a last insult behind him. The door banged shut behind him with finality.
“You enjoy soup?” Soler asked me, putting her spectacles back to her nose to study me.
“Of course. Though I have been used to dog stew.”
“Dog!” she cried in alarm, and dropped her glasses. “How barbaric!”
“Our guest was living with the equatorial bedouins,” Newton explained. “Though I venture she was not born to them.”
I held my head up proudly. “Too much culture for a Yern?” I asked.
“No. More the way you took to city clothing when you abandoned your robes. As if you had been quite used to them in another life.”
“Perhaps.”
“Perhaps you’ll tell me about it.”
Under his intense blue eyes, I answered, “Perhaps.”
“Now!” Soler interjected. “Let me begin by thanking you for bringing us Hermes’ chemicals! We had quite given up hope of ever seeing them. When he was...when he met his unfortunate...when...” He looked at Newton for help.
“When he was killed by the F’rar, we thought our work would have to stop. But now that you’ve taken on his routes...” Newton smiled.
“I didn’t say that,” I replied.
“I know. It was mere hope on my part. Is there any chance?”
“Frankly I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
Soler’s countenance darkened. “Oh, dear. So this means that what we have now will be the last that we see?”
Newton turned to her. “I am working on other avenues. They will not be as convenient as Hermes was, though.”
“And you’re sure he did not give us up?”
“I think we would have heard from the F’rar by now if he had. But my ears are still to the ground.”
“Good. Good.” Soler bent to her soup again, using her wide spoon to slurp it into her mouth, until she stopped suddenly with a pained look on his face and turned her head sideways to squint at me.
“You did say dog?”
“Yes, it was quite tasty.”
She shivered and went back to her meal, shaking her head and saying, “Barbarian,” between mouthfuls.
“May I ask you about your books?” I ventured, after trying the soup myself. It was bland enough, with overcooked vegetables, a hint of leeks.
At first there was no response, but then Soler had finished her soup, tilting the bowl up to her mouth with her paws.
When I repeated the request she blinked at me and said, “Yes?”
I pointed to the shelf behind his head. “Your books.”
“Yes, of course! You like their colors?”
“Excuse me?”
She swivelled in her chair and plucked a volume from the shelf. It was blue all around, with a blank cover.
My heart sank, and continued to sink as she opened the book to show blank pages.
“Are the rest just like this?”
“Of course! We call them ‘notebooks of the Old Ones.’”
I noticed that Newton was regarding me quietly with his blue eyes and ironic mouth.
“I have something that might interest you,” I said, and got up. I felt Newton’s gaze following me as I left the office, made my way through the labyrinth of noise and commotion (I watched two young assistants bent intently over a silver box which suddenly spurted flame, driving them back with cries) and went to Standard, my horse. I retrieved my treasure from his saddlebag and returned to the office (passing the same two young assistants, their faces covered with soot, once more studying the same singed box, if anything from even closer quarters now), shutting the door behind me. When I regained my seat I saw that Soler was studying my half-full soup mug with barely concealed interest.
“This will make you forget soup,” I said, handing her the hefty volume.
For a moment she looked at it with indifference, studying its bland brown cover, but then her eyes widened as she opened it at random and saw columns of figures.
“Oh! Oh!” she cried, overcome with excitement. She rifled through the pages and held it up for Newton’s examination. “Look!”
“I’ve already seen it,” Newton said wryly.
“I figured as much,” I said to him.
“The innkeeper Pavin was going to make off with it, but I convinced him otherwise. I was waiting to see if you would do the right thing.”
“The right thing?”
His wry smile widened a millimeter.
“Or you would have confiscated it,” I stated.
“Of course.”
Soler was lost in her enthusiasm, giving little bleats of happy disbelief. “Where did you get this?” she asked.
Newton seconded the question, and I told them of the facility the Mighty had taken me to.
“An oxygenation station,” Newton said, with certainty. “We must mount an expedition if possible and see if there is anything else of use there.”
Soler nodded absently. “Naturally...”
Newton said to me, “Much of the facility you are in now was outfitted with equipment from a similar station twenty kilometers from here. It was in very bad condition, but we saved what we could. There is another station near Robinson, and rumors of others in
the south. At one time, long ago, we believe they produced oxygen and pumped it into the air.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it was needed,” he replied. “Some of our people believe that at one time Mars had a very different atmosphere. It is one of the questions we are trying to answer here.”
Soler held the book up again, pointing with a trembling finger to a particular page. “I’m not sure, Newton,” she said, her whiskers trembling with excitement, “I’m not sure, of course, but this book might provide us with...”
“It might at that,” Newton answered cryptically, but when I looked to him for explanation he said nothing.
Soler looked at me. “Thank you, Ransom! Thank you!”
She half rose, tumbling the book to the floor, and after retrieving it with a startled cry and laying it gently on the table, she reached out and took both of my paws in her own.
“You have done us a great service,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.
“We should go,” Newton said, as Soler nodded and sat down, opening the book at random and immediately losing herself in it.
“You can have my soup, too,” I said as I rose. Soler mumbled thanks, not hearing a word I said, as she ran a bitten-to-the-nub claw over one page and then another.”
“You don’t realize how happy you’ve made her,” Newton said outside, raising his voice to be heard above the din.
“What did she mean when she said that volume might provide you with something?”
Newton shrugged. “We’re working on many things here, Ransom. Perhaps I’ll tell you another time.”
“Perhaps,” I said, wryly.
He smiled thinly and led me on. “There are things I must attend to,” he said. “But I’ll leave you in good hands.”
We stopped at a table where nothing seemed to be happening. There was an anatomical chart on a stand, and a slender fellow with a long, thin face in a chair so deep in his own thoughts that he didn’t even acknowledge our existence.
“Is he blind?” I asked.
“On the contrary,” Newton replied, clapping his paws in front of the fellow’s face.
The other made a startled sound and then looked at Newton as if trying to focus on him. Suddenly he did and leaped out of his chair to take the other cat’s arm.
Haydn of Mars Page 9
