Haydn of Mars

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Newton! So happy to see you!”

  “I have someone I want you to meet, Jeffrey,” Newton said, and introduced us.

  Jeffrey took my arm and said exuberantly, “Hello!”

  Newton pulled up a second chair, and told me to sit in it while he spoke to Jeffrey in private for a moment. Then he turned his attention back to me.

  “I will find you later. We will dine together. As we speak, some of Hermes’s spices – the real ones – are no doubt making our bland soup taste better.”

  He took his leave, and I was faced with Jeffrey, who once again had sunk so deeply into his own thoughts that he seemed in a trance.

  “Jeffrey?” I said tentatively.

  He suddenly began to speak, staring straight through me. “Did you know,” he lectured, “that at one time a cat was no larger than a half meter in length?” He held his paws apart that distance, and without waiting for me to comment on this startling disclosure he went on. “We have fossil records of this. In fact, at one time millennia ago, cats were smaller on average than your common house dog, and had tails. The brain of this ancient cat, we deduce, was not much more developed than a dog’s. But over time, this changed. There are fossils of these intermediate growth steps. Some of them are startling.”

  He rifled through the charts and papers on his desk, putting before me a set of drawings depicting the fossilized remains of various carcasses. They were numbered, and as the numbers increased the bodies showed distinct differences. The legs of the early samples were like that of many four legged animals, designed to that mode of walking. But then the legs began to elongate, the thighs slim, becoming narrower and the pelvis turning upright while the chest grew wider and the arms longer, slimmer, elbows less pronounced, the tail vestigial. It was a remarkable transformation.

  “This happened over millions of years, of course. Now we only walk on all fours when at extreme rest. In another hundred thousand years I imagine the pelvis will straighten to the point that even this facility will be gone.”

  “And you’re the first one to study this?”

  He blinked, and said in wonder, “I really don’t know. It certainly is fascinating though, isn’t it?” He pointed to the various drawings laid out before us now in a row. “This was from the Tharsis region, and this one I unearthed near Chryse Ocean...and this one at the steppes of Arsia Mons. Did you know,” he said, abruptly changing his tone and topic, “that some of these developments were dead ends? As if nature were tinkering, trying to find just the right brew! The modern day Baldy is a descendent of one of these false steps of nature, with his near-naked carcass, smaller stature and tail. As much animal as feline. So is the wild cat, even more so. I call this science developmentalism. Over such vast stretches of time...”

  He went on like this for what seemed like hours. Though I must admit that much of it was fascinating, I found myself eventually settling into a kind of stupor.

  Occasionally he asked me a simple question, and I caught him studying my features closely at one point.

  “Hmm?”

  “I’m afraid–” I began.

  Suddenly Newton was back.

  “So, Jeffrey,” he asked the developmentalist, “what do you deduce?”

  Jeffrey instantly turned his attention from me to Newton. “She is definitely from the south, with a ninety percent probability that she is from the city of Wells. Perhaps born to the west, in Argyre. The speech patterns, shape of the skull, the mannerisms all point to it.”

  “Only ninety percent?” Newton asked.

  Jeffrey blinked, his long, serious face missing the joking tone of the remark. “I’m sorry – Isn’t that enough?”

  Newton threw back his head and laughed, his voice low and rasping. “Quite enough, Jeffrey. Any chance she was reared by a Bedouin clan?”

  Jeffrey blinked. “Oh, no. Absolutely none.”

  Newton put a paw on Jeffrey’s arm. “Thank you, my friend.”

  Newton led me away, and said, “So, Ransom. Did you find Jeffrey’s theories...interesting?”

  “Are you happy with yourself for tricking me?”

  “Not at all. I know as much now as I did before I gave you to our developmentalist. We shall leave it at that for the moment.”

  We had reached one wall of the amphitheater, and a door opened for us into a dark corridor.

  “Come with me. There’s something I want to show you,” he said.

  I followed. When the door behind us closed the sudden lack of noise was palpable. There were dark windows in this corridor, as in the other, and as we passed them Newton gave a lazy wave.

  “Acknowledging your spies?” I asked.

  “Those spies are what keep us from destruction.” He stopped and looked at me seriously. “I don’t think you realize how important we are.”

  He didn’t wait for my reply but walked on.

  When we came to the end of the tunnel, a solid rock wall, there was another window in the side wall and Newton turned to it. “Out, please,” he said.

  The wall dissolved, and there was an open doorway to the darkness beyond.

  “How did you–” I said in wonder.

  “We do many things here,” he said quietly, and stepped outside. “It was actually an illusion of sorts.”

  It was a cool evening, and the smell of outside air was refreshing. We were in a small grotto, nicely sculpted gardens with a platform in the center. It was surrounded by red brick walls on all sides.

  “This is lovely,” I said.

  “Yes. Please, follow me.”

  He led me through the path toward the platform. On either side were beautifully tended plants. In the weak light of Deimos overhead I saw that they were each labeled. Many were fragrant flowers, and the air was rich with their perfume.

  The platform was up a step, and Newton held his paw out to help me. I refused it. Even in the scant light I could see him smile.

  Something was mounted in the middle of the platform on a pedestal – a white tube pointing toward the heavens –

  “A telescope!” I marveled.

  “You’ve seen one before?” he asked.

  I was going to say that, yes, I had, in the royal tower, but held my tongue.

  “I’ve heard of them,” I said instead.

  “Hmm, yes.”

  He bent over the lower end of the tube, and looked in for a moment. I tried to hide my excitement and impatience.

  Finally he straightened and said, “Please look.”

  I bent, seeking the ocular with my eye. For a moment I saw nothing, then moved my eye slightly and there was a blue-brown marble swimming in a sea of space.

  “Earth!” I gasped.

  “Yes.”

  I took my eye away from the telescope and studied the area of the sky where it pointed.

  There, sure enough, was the planet the Mighty had called the Blue Lady.

  I studied the planet through the instrument again: a mottled place suffused with yellow-green clouds, a few dark land markings, a polar cap and the overriding blue that gave it its color and name.

  “The blue is water, we’re fairly sure of it,” Newton stated.

  “But so much of it! It can’t be!”

  “Because Mars is so shy of it?” he responded. “It is true our oceans are shallow, and our river beds sometimes dry. Why can’t the Earth have more water than Mars?”

  I stood away from the instrument. “Why have you shown me this?”

  He hesitated, and then shrugged in the near dark. “Let me show you something else.”

  He pointed to another part of the sky, where the Great Shawl, a gauzy white immensity of, I knew from my studies, billions of stars, stretched like a baby’s blanket across the sky.

  “Are you going to tell me that it really is a shawl?” I joked.

  I thought I heard him chuckle. “What if I were to tell you that each of those stars may have planets around it, just as our own Sol has Earth and Mars and the others?”

  I said nothing
.

  “This is something else we study here. Along with biology, and the fossil record, and the workings of machines like the one that projected that natural looking wall at the end of the tunnel we just came through. We now have a land machine much more efficient and reliable than the steam powered ones you’ve seen. And many, many other things.”

  I felt his passion as he continued. “These are immensely important things, Ransom. Important for this planet, and for our people. We must be allowed to continue this work. If the F’rar were to find and destroy us, it would be a tragedy immeasurably beyond our own mortal destruction. It could mean the end of life on Mars.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “We believe that the atmosphere is slowly losing oxygen,” he said. Again, his way of simply stating what was on his mind managed to startle me.

  “How do you know this?”

  “We have instruments, we have done experiments, and we are in the process of building, secretly, of course, a research station atop Mount Olympus. There have been rudimentary balloon flights, but the F’rar either shoot them down, thinking them enemy reconnaissance, or, sometimes, they fail. But, yes, Mars is losing its atmosphere.”

  “How long...?”

  He shrugged. “We’re not sure at this point. But let me ask you: wouldn’t you want to know?”

  “Of course.”

  He nodded, satisfied at my answer. “Come with me.”

  I followed him off the platform (once again refusing his hand; it was an old fashioned gesture) and through the garden to what seemed a back wall but proved to be an entrance to a house. We mounted three stone steps and stood before a common red wooden door, which he opened with a key. Inside was a foyer, and a well lit and cozy living area bordered by a smaller room. The other side the living area – which, I noted with joy, contained a compact upright tambon, an instrument in which, alas, I was badly talented – opened out into a grand dining room flanked by a neat and tidy kitchen. The table was set for two places, and there were candles lit.

  He smiled. “I told you I would offer you a good meal.”

  We sat, while menials of some sort, not servants, he later explained, but rather apprentices in the Guild, appeared and served. The meal was excellent, and there was an exquisite wine.

  He talked through the entire meal. I answered his questions politely, but there continued a wariness on his part, as if he were circling me, trying to decide when and where to strike.

  Finally I asked him, “Do you have much news here of the rebels?”

  “Ah,” he said. “I thought you might find interest in that. Mostly through spies, though we do have a crude radiographic system that works occasionally. The trouble is finding someone reliable on the other end to talk to. But, yes, we do get news, as it comes. Apparently the F’rar are having some trouble crushing the entire planet.”

  I nodded.

  “You are pleased with this?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Talking like this could get you executed these days.”

  “I suppose. But does anyone dare not feel this way, at least in their hearts?”

  “You must understand something,” Newton said, as the plates were cleared away and a dessert wine, along with a frozen concoction that tasted like lemon flavored ice shavings, was served. “These are very devious times.”

  “I well understand that.”

  To myself, thinking of Hera and Hermes, I thought: More than most.

  “People,” he continued, “will do what they must to continue with what they love and see as important. Sometimes men wear two masks.”

  He was staring off into the distance. I was puzzled by this remark, but let it go.

  He rose, and put his napkin on the table. “I would like to show you something else,” he said.

  I followed him across the living room, with its carved wooden chairs covered in dark fabrics, its low lamps, its warm fireplace kicking sparks and filling the room with wavering dancing light, its precious musical instrument, to a smaller room beyond. It was a kind of study. It, also, was richly appointed: a huge carved desk of junto wood, a tall chair behind it and the desk facing a wall composed of another, smaller fireplace and a row of shelves above it.

  He took something down from the shelf and handed it to me. Remembering what had happened in Soler’s office that after, my heart did not leap at the sight of this book, until I saw that its cover was graced by an inset picture.

  “Open it,” Newton offered.

  I did so, and a riot of color leaped out at my eyes. It was filled with pictures of the Old Ones!

  He took it gently from my hands and turned to a specific page. “It is a picture book of great minds of the ancients.”

  I continued to stare as he stopped at a particular portrait of an Old One, looking as always naked and wrinkly, the features sharp and almost frightening compared to our feline ones.

  Under the picture was: SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

  “It was after him I named myself, years ago. I was not given his name at birth. As far as I know I am the only feline ever to bear his name.

  “Who was he?”

  “A great scientist of the Old Ones.” He closed the book and returned it to its shelf. “Unfortunately, my picture book contains little more than pictures. It may even have been intended for a child of the Old Ones.”

  “So–” he began, but at that moment a doorbell rang off at the other end of the house, and he held his thought, waiting. In another moment one of the servants, looking nervous, appeared in the door to the office and announced, “It is Carson, Sir.”

  “Show him in,” Newton said. To me he said, “It’s best if you stay here, and out of sight.”

  I saw why, a moment later, as Newton, suddenly stiff, slipped from the office, closing the door all but a crack behind him and marched forward, paw extended in greeting, to a red shirt commander who was just entering the living room.

  “Carson! So good to see you!” Newton enthused.

  The other took his hand briefly, unsmiling, but settled himself without being offered into the most comfortable chair in front of the fire. Newton took the lesser chair beside him. The two apprentices appeared with a tray. Soon the two felines were smoking and studying glasses of what looked by its familiar bottle to be brandy.

  They talked, and I tried to listen, but the red shirt’s tones were low and Newton spent much time nodding. When one of the apprentices appeared behind them unannounced, Carson spun on him and shouted, “Get out, you rodent! How dare you!”

  The boy nearly ran from the room, as the conversation continued in even lower tones.

  The fire was low when the red shirt commander stood and stretched. The brandy bottle was nearly empty. Most of it, I noted, had gone into Carson’s gullet. He staggered slightly on getting up, and laughed and this time shook Newton’s paw vigorously.

  “A good evening! We will do this again soon!”

  “Of course!” Newton rejoined, with less enthusiasm. “Any time!”

  The red shirt took a staggering step forward, and knocked something from a low table which broke. Ignoring the damage Carson stumbled on, making it to the front hallway and then disappearing. There was another crash, and then Carson was heard shouting, “Out of my way, you dolt!” before finally the front door was opened and slammed shut, and he was gone.

  The two apprentices, looking haggard, appeared in the doorway to the living room and Newton dismissed them. He knelt to examine the broken shards of what had been on the table, lifted them gently and held them to the light for a moment before placing them, just as gently, on the table from which they were disturbed.

  He walked thoughtfully toward me, as I opened the door.

  “Did you hear any of it?” he asked.

  “Very little.”

  He nodded, and opened his paw. A tiny sliver of broken blue glass lay there.

  “It was a present from my daughter,” he said wistfully. Then he bade me come back with him to the
living room, and, after fussing with the cushions, made me sit in the comfortable chair the red shirt had vacated.

  I sat, and immediately felt a sharp, thin stab in my posterior which immediately receded when I shifted my weight. I thought I had sat on another sliver of broken blue glass.

  He emptied the brandy bottle into a new glass for me, and then stirred the fire into last life. For a few moments we sat in silence and watched embers spark and settle, and listened to their sighing rustle.

  “So you see,” he said at last, “that a man can wear many hats.”

  “You’re a collaborator?”

  “Hardly, Ransom.”

  “What do you do for that creature Carson?”

  “As a scion of the oldest family in Sagan, it is my duty to safeguard its citizens.” He turned and gave me a tired smile. It was then that I realized that he was older than he looked. “I’m helping the F’rar to track down the Science Guild, which is rumored to be very active in this part of Mars.”

  “Carson is a fool.”

  “Thank the One for that. And pray he continues to be one. Because of my station, my grounds and my garden have not been searched. I am accorded this luxury. I will do everything I can to continue in that fashion.”

  He breathed deeply. “I am very tired, Ransom. It has been a long day. I have arranged, if you are willing, for you to sleep in my spare room. It is off the hall to the right. Either that or you can find your way back through the garden and sleep with the other guild members.”

  “Thank you, I will stay. It is very kind of you.”

  He nodded. “The bed will suit your bedouin ways?”

  I returned a ghost of his wry smile. “I can always sleep on the floor.”

  “Sleep well, nevertheless, Ransom.”

  “Thank you.”

  I got up as he did, and made my way to the hallway. I turned right, and saw two closed doors, one on either side of the hall. I walked back to the living room to ask him which door was meant for me.

  I stopped dead in the opening, and observed Newton kneeling over the chair I had just vacated. He was searching the cushion carefully for something, and then drew something up and into the bare light of the fire. It was needle thin and silver. He examined it for a moment, and then nodded and placed it in a small, long box which closed with a click.