“Majesty,” he rasped, “you must do your old general one final favor. I served your father, and his mother before. I served the republic with all my heart. I lost my son to the first war, but I...always...served. I only wish that I could have died on the field...”
He broke off into a weak coughing fit, and I swear that any normal feline would have been dead at that point. But Xarr fought death itself to finish what he wanted to tell me.
“I...have served well...”
“Yes, general, you have served well. No one has served better.”
“Then grant me this...wish...”
Again he broke off, a spasm wracking his body from head to foot. He moaned and clenched his teeth until the fit passed.
“I...”
“Tell me what you want, general, and I will swear to do it.”
“Find...”
His voice was barely a breath, and I leaned even closer, assaulted by the rancid, herblike odor.
His eyes drew wide, as if looking into the world beyond, and he grabbed me tight with both paws as if to take me there. For a moment I was frightened but then his eyes locked on mine and he roared, “Find the one who murdered me!”
And then his body went limp, and he had gone.
Shaking, I turned to Newton and said, “Is this true?”
“Yes.”
“He was murdered?”
“The same poison that was used to murder your grandmother Haydn. In her case it was put in gemel tea – this time into his last flagon of wine last night.”
“Who did this?” I demanded.
Newton was staring past me, at the lifeless form of General Xarr. He seemed almost not to have heard me. I was about to repeat the question when I saw that a tear was tracking down the scientist’s stoic face. I had never thought Newton capable of such sentiment.
“Who...” I asked, gently.
“We don’t know, your majesty.” And now he looked at me, his eyes dry. “But it means we have a traitor and assassin in our midst.”
Xarr’s funeral was on a grand scale, as I ordered. His casket, draped in the colors of his city of Burroughs, green and white, was lowered into the ground after traversing a mile-long gauntlet of his troops. Though at attention, many of them were openly weeping. A plain white tablet marked the filled-in hole. Later a monument, which I had proposed and the Senate had immediately adopted, would be erected on the spot, a statue showing the general in his prime, arm raised to give orders, horrid facial scars and all.
“Good-bye, old friend,” I whispered, and lay the first red rose upon the white marker. I would be followed by ten thousand of his closest friends, his troops. I could bear no more, and took my leave, nearly running to my chambers so that others would not see their Queen cry. This man, this ancient warrior, had bounced me on his knee when I was a kit and told me stories of the battles he had fought with my grandmother and father. In these stories, he had never been the hero, only a servant of the republic, a humble soldier who did the best by his men and gave his best for his Mars. There would never, I knew, be another like him on the surface of the planet. He was already missed, and would ever be so.
My sobbing, self indulgent, was short-lived.
There was a message from my grandmother that I must come at once, because war, once more, had broken out on the planet Mars.
Six
The aerial trip this time was a glum and lonely one. Newton’s insistence that only those who could absolutely be trusted be allowed access to me limited my companions to Newton himself and two bodyguards. Even Rebecca, with whom I could at least play a spirited game of Jakra, was left behind. It was not even certain that she would be there when I returned to Wells, unless she passed Newton’s vetting. I had requested that Darwin accompany us, but was told that he was busy elsewhere, doing Newton’s bidding.
We found Thomas, my father’s manservant, in his accustomed spot, next to the King’s chair. But the chair was empty.
“King Sebastian is being... regenerated,” Thomas, who always looked as though he was about to fade to a ghost himself, explained, and this satisfied Newton.
“My niece remains well?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied, and then I added, suppressing, as always, a shiver, “Doesn’t any of this bother you?”
“What do you mean?” Thomas asked.
“These...ghosts,” I said.
My grandmother, who was in a particularly vigorous state, her outline a vivid blue, smiled slightly and said, “I’ve asked myself that often. When you think about it, Clara, it’s better than the alternative.”
“Is it?” I replied. I regarded Newton. “You may take this as a royal order. When I die, I don’t want to be... saved.”
Haydn chirped a laugh. “Are you sure, child?”
“Yes,” I said adamantly. “You can have your One and Two, but there will be no Three.”
“It is too bad this...process could not have been used for Xarr,” Haydn said, her voice tinged with sadness.
“His poisoning was too severe.”
“Yes... I do find it curious that his assassination came at an opportune time for Frane. According to the gypsies, and Quiff’s people, who have been shadowing her, Frane is now at the head of a Baldy army ten thousand strong, heading north and east toward the Valles Marineris.”
“She means to make a stand there?” Newton said, surprise in his voice.
“Apparently.”
“Is she truly mad?”
“Perhaps. This is why Xarr’s loss is so strongly felt at this time. It is curious that he was murdered just when Frane makes her first big move.”
“I see no coincidence in it at all.”
Haydn turned her steely blue gaze on the scientist. “Has it occurred to you that perhaps the F’rar clan will turn treacherous once more, and seek to destroy the republic once and for all with Frane’s help?”
Though I burned with sudden anger, I held my tongue as Newton immediately replied, glancing at me, “I would hope that would not be the case. But the timing is more than, as you say, curious.”
Haydn was abruptly looking at me. “You must realize, Queen Clara, that even though you are half F’rar, this may not be enough to stave off the F’rar appetite. Why have half a loaf when you can have it all?”
“I will not let it happen!” I shouted.
Her voice still even, Haydn replied, “You may have no say in it. There have been rumblings in the far provinces, and already violence has broken out between F’rar and the other clans. It is mainly incidental, because felines have good memories and the F’rar have been treacherous twice in the last fifteen years. I tried to heal the rift, your father tried to heal the rift, and now you will try. The record has not been a good one. These animosities go back centuries. The republic, we both know, is the only hope of uniting Mars. But blood runs hotter than cold intellect.”
“I said I will not let it happen!”
My own blood was running much hotter than my intellect, and I spent the rest of the interview stewing in a corner, clenching my paws into fists and listening to the mumbled strategy behind me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my father’s empty chair begin to fill with vague smoky blue light, which eventually coalesced into the shape of King Sebastian. Thomas, now filled with purpose, leaned over my father and whispered into his ear as he became ever more evident, an almost solid blue light.
Again I shivered, and vowed anew that they would never do this to me. When I was dead I would be dead, like old Xarr.
Later, on the aerial ride home, Newton left me to my own thoughts and then, eventually, intruded on them.
“You must remember a few things, your majesty. And it’s time you knew of others. There were things I thought best to keep from your father, and now I think it was a mistake. He did not know about Queen Haydn’s...regeneration, because we in the Science Guild had no idea if what we had done would last. It was a difficult decision even to try. The technology had been gleaned, as most of ours has been, from the Old Ones. It
is very difficult for me to admit, because I am a man of science, that most – practically all – of what I’ve accomplished has been by standing on the shoulders of those who have come before me.
“We still know very little about the Old Ones, and yet what we do know baffles us. Where did they come from? Why did they die out? Was there a time when our two races coexisted, and if so, why did we flourish while they were swept away?
“Their few books that have survived, along with a few of their fossils, have given us scant clues. It is through their machines that we know them best. We know for example that in their days on Mars there was an Old One named The Machine Master who built, or designed, much of what we have been able to make use of. We think that in that era the oxygenation stations had already been shut down and abandoned, because we find no mention in any of his records of any such devices. They must have been in use before his time.
“This of course hinders us now, because what records of The Machine Master that haven’t been destroyed are quite complete and useful. He was a meticulous engineer. There are hints of devices he made that are astounding. Your father and grandmother were regenerated using a technology that is incomplete to us – apparently a variation of it was used as a weapon. His notes mention ‘plasma soldiers,’ though we have been able to find no record of any such device.”
“He sounds as if he was a horrible creature,” I said.
Newton, as if broken from his reverie, looked at me blankly and then nodded. “Perhaps so. While much of his work was benevolent, there is a darker side to his engineering that is all too evident. There are hints that he was being driven to build these destructive devices by a malevolent force – though we don’t know what that was.” He smiled faintly. “What it does tell us is that the Old Ones were not immune to war or cruelty, just as we are not.” His eyes took on a faraway look. “There are hints at other storehouses of knowledge which we have not yet discovered...”
“Let them stay hidden, then.”
“Would you have creatures like Frane make use of such power, instead of the republic?” he asked.
I pursed my lips, because I had no answer.
“I fear we will miss old Xarr greatly. I know very little of military matters, and I don’t much understand this move of Frane’s, to fight a great open battle when she has a stolen weapon to draw on.”
“What exactly did she obtain by taking over the Science Guild facility at Solis Planum?”
Newton’s eyes darkened. “The last remaining concussion bomb on Mars, like the one which destroyed the city of Burroughs in the First Republic War. It was kept for research purposes, and now it is in her hands. There was an aerial machine, very fast, as well as a few ground transports. It is the concussion bomb that worries me most of all.”
“What will she do with it?”
“I don’t know, but I believe she must be stopped before she has a chance to use it.”
The rest of our trip home was spent in troubled silence.
Xarr’s absence was already making itself felt. There had been defections from the army, many of them F’rar. I was introduced to the feline who would take the old general’s place, a much younger man in a crisp new general’s uniform. He was prim and proper, with slicked back black fur and pink eyes, and looked to me to be putting on an act, though I learned later that he had fought hard in the first two Republican Wars – on the side of the F’rar. I did not like him.
“And so,” he said, for at least the tenth time, pointing to a spot on his tenth chart, a map of the Valles Marineris region that I had to admit was detailed, “we will draw Frane like a magnet toward the great chasm, and merely” – he made a dismissive gesture with his paw – “push her in!”
“You make it sound so simple, General Reis. Tell me, how do you propose to, as you say, ‘draw Frane like a magnet’ toward the canyon?”
“It is simple, your majesty,” he said, swelling up like a proud peacock. “She is already heading there!”
“And how long will it take her to reach Valles Marineris?”
“A matter of weeks, your majesty.”
“And your army will be there, waiting for her?”
“Well...” He averted his eyes, pretending to study his chart.
“How large is our army, after recent defections?” I asked, keeping my voice level and businesslike.
“Those...figures are changing daily, your majesty.”
“Today’s figures, please, general.”
Without looking at me, he pretended to rifle through a stack of papers next to his chart. “That would be...”
“Let me give you today’s figures,” I said. “While Frane is at this point leading an army of ten thousand Baldies, with more arriving daily, the Army of the Second Republic stands as of this morning at eight thousand, seven hundred and fifty, with a defection rate of one percent per day. Does this sound correct?”
“I would say...” he nodded. “I would say that sounds correct, yes, your majesty.” He turned from his papers to look at me hopefully. “But—”
“The word ‘but’ does not exist in this room, general. We both know that if you were to give the order this afternoon to march, with far garrisons joining you on the way, you could not reach Valles Marineris, or wherever Frane chooses to fight, in less than four weeks! And that’s at a forced march pace, with defections bleeding away your army even as it’s replenished. The defections we will work on. But the plain fact is that Frane will choose the battlefield, and will be there, entrenched, waiting for us.”
“‘Us,’ your majesty?” he said, his pink eyes widening.
“I will be leading the army, General Reis.”
He began to blubber. “But–but–but–this cannot be!”
“What did I tell you about the word ‘but,’ general?”
His mouth clamped shut, and his pink eyes bulged.
“I will lead the army, and you will do everything in your power to assist me, and when the time comes we will win a great victory over Frane, and destroy her and her Baldy army. Yes?”
“As you wish, your majesty.”
“Good. Now kneel down, general,” I said, holding out my right paw, “and kiss my ring of office in fealty to me and the Second Republic.”
For a moment fire showed in his eyes, but he did as he was told, and went down on one knee and bowed his head over my outstretched paw.
I felt the lightest of kisses on my ring.
“From this moment on, you owe every ounce of your allegiance to me,” I said. “You are F’rar, and I am half so, and we have a great duty to our republic and to our planet. There can be no further treachery by our clan. It cannot and will not be allowed. Do you understand?”
He looked up at me briefly, before bowing his head again.
“Yes, your majesty.”
“Good. With your help, I will stop the defections in the army among our people. And we will march tomorrow, at dawn. Yes?”
Again a brief, unreadable look.
“Of course, your majesty.”
“Good. And if you do not prove yourself worthy to me, or your office, and betray either in any way, I will kill you myself.”
Seven
“But this is madness!” Darwin said, as I knew he would.
“I am very tired, Darwin, and I don’t wish to argue. I have made my decision. Please be happy with it.” I waved an exhausted paw, from where I lay curled on my divan. Its soft pillows felt like cool hands calling me to sleep. I wanted only to give myself up to them.
“But if you must go, take me with you!”
I shook my head, and yawned. “No.”
“You cannot keep me here! You must take me so that I can...cook for you!”
I laughed. “You pride yourself too much on your cooking, Darwin. Just because you and my father were forced to become chefs in the last war, doesn’t mean you’re any good at it. From what I hear, my father was the much better cook–”
“In all seriousness, I cannot stay here.”
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“I need you here to help Newton, and to keep an eye on the senate and the assembly. I’m appointing you Queen’s Representative. It’s all in my grandmother’s charter. You will have powers second only to mine.”
“But you’ll need me in the field!”
I was too tired, and did not want this conversation to go anywhere near the mysterious, frightening places it could easily go, so I feigned toughness, just as I had that afternoon with General Reis.
“It is my wish,” I said simply. “Go now.”
And then I closed my eyes until he was gone.
But sleep, of course, would not come, despite my exhaustion. I had done nothing but fight with someone or other the entire day. Even Brenda, the old cook, had to be disciplined to keep her from marching to war with me – and she with arthritis, and a bad hip!
I opened my tired eyes and watched the open curtains in my room flutter. It was a clear night, and over the top of the Hall of Assembly the stars shone like diamonds on the blackest velvet. How soothing to be out among the stars, I thought – how much better to float among them and forget all the cares of running an entire world – one which might be destroyed by either war or natural catastrophe in the coming months.
How much better not to be me...
I dreamed then, of my birth. Or at least what I thought my birth was like. I remember coldness from the beginning, descending a cold shaft, a mother devoid of warmth, lost in unhappiness and loss, incapable of transforming that into a new, warm love for her only kit. My mother had a litter of one, an unusual and some – those given to superstition – said, of special significance. I was given over to the care of nursemaids immediately, and never wanted for anything except my mother’s touch.
And then I dreamed of Darwin, barely out of kithood himself when he first played with me, always smiling and warm, in a way, I suppose, a substitute for my mother, as well as the brother I never had.
And even in the dream I knew that I had ordered him to stay behind not because I needed him to watch the government, which would do very well watching itself, I thought – but because I wanted him, above all other things, to be safe.
Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy Page 3
