“Stay where we are,” Darwin ordered, his eyes already feasting on the view outside.
“Very well,” the voice replied.
“We’re in space,” I said in wonder.
“Above Mars,” Darwin said.
Below us was spread our own planet, seen from a height no feline had ever beheld it from. The north polar cap was far below us, a tiny insignificant thing now, and beyond it in all directions was a red and green world with blue patches of lakes and oceans, a million shades of red, from the lightest pink to crimson and russet and the darkest brown rust. The green patches were vivid in the midst of these colors, and now I spied Arsia Mons, its massive caldera looking, from this height, small and lonely. The world was split into night and day, and in the dark area was a weak patch of illumination that marked the city of Robinson. I saw another in the far distance that marked Bradbury, and its lights were even more wan.
And enveloping it all, the thinnest blanket of pink-yellow, the merest smudge against the edge of the world, the atmosphere.
“It looks like a toy, so fragile,” I remarked.
“I could stay up here forever,” Darwin said.
It was then that my stomach spoke to me, announcing my hunger with a pain that doubled me over, and when next I awoke we were on the ground and dawn was breaking in the city of Bradbury, and I was being helped from this marvelous machine which already Newton was eyeing with delight, and brought to a place of rest and refreshment.
Part Three
The Last Battle
Thirty-Four
A day later found me rested, and restless. The court physician, Mandrake, tried to keep me in bed, citing my still healing head wound and recent bout of malnutrition, but I overruled him, and called a council meeting for that morning.
“But at least hold court in bed!” he begged.
Darwin, I learned, was in even worse shape than myself, which meant his protestations of fatigue and hunger had been a feint for my benefit. I wanted to kiss and kick him at the same time, but they wouldn’t let me see him.
“Get out,” was my reply, and only after he had left did I admitted my own frailty and call for the meeting to come to me.
Even then I felt silly, propped up by a dozen white silk pillows and attended to by a bevy of servants bearing trays of potions and sweet meats. The only thing I had been able to keep in my stomach was bits of dried bread and water. Even so, I was ravenously hungry. The dichotomy of want impossible to satisfy was maddening, and added to my ill temper.
Finally I cried, “Get out, all of you!” to the servants, as Newton, looking sprier than I had ever seen him, no doubt due to the stimulation of his new toy, looked on wryly, and as the other ministers pretended not to notice.
When the trays and their bearers had left, Warton, now minister of war since my grandfather’s death, reported the last sighting of Frane, which was to the north and east of Bradbury.
There was something else, I could tell, and I ordered the rotund feline, who had a brilliant scholarly mind but had never buckled on a sword in his life, to tell me what it was. He hemmed and hawed, pulling his claws through his whiskers nervously, until I exploded with him the way I had with the tray-bearers.
“Tell me immediately, or resign your position!”
His light brown fur blanched, and his eyes widened.
“Your mother...is with her,” he said.
I went cold, and said to no one in particular, “As we thought, Frane had her secreted away during the battle.” I turned specifically to Warton. “And you have no idea where they are?”
He shook his head ruefully. “Only that they are north and east of here.”
“Then that is where we will look.”
Warton began, “We are scouring the hills and towns with—” but, impatiently, I cut him off and turned to Newton.
“Can we utilize the space ship?”
The old scientist shook his head. “It is too fast for use in the atmosphere, and its tracking instruments are strictly for navigation. We are using every air ship at our disposal, of course, and are checking on reports from local farmers and townspeople – but, as you know, your majesty, Frane is crafty, and sometimes locals are loath to talk to officials. We do know that the area she is in is free from underground passages, which means she is somewhere on the surface. But the going is hard–“
“Then we will find her ourselves,” came a weak voice from the doorway, and I turned to see my husband, Darwin, standing pale and weak. He was smiling at me, and winked, before he collapsed to the floor. Warton rushed to his side and helped support him as he was removed, back to his own bed.
I was feeling tired myself.
“Let me think on this,” I said, adjourning the meeting.
Before the last of them had reached the doorway, I was dead asleep.
Thirty-Five
I awoke with someone sharing my bed. A jolt of alarm went through me, and I reached for the dagger by my bedside and the bell pull that lay just behind it, but a paw stayed me.
I turned to look into Darwin’s grinning face.
“I meant what I said, you know,” he told me, gently releasing my arm.
We lay back, our sides touching, and I said, “I missed you. How do you feel?”
“Like a new kit. Nearly a day has passed since I collapsed in your doorway. You will feel much better, too, when you’ve had something proper to eat.”
“You should have told me you were in such bad shape.”
“Why?” He laughed. “So you could feel even worse?”
I stroked his paw lightly with my claws. “What news is there?”
“This place is running without us. Newton has gone to meet with Stella, and draw the rest of her secrets out. Half the army is out crawling over the hills looking for Frane. The senators and the Assembly are acting like there never was war and are fighting with one another over anything that presents itself. And the architects are drawing up plans to rebuild Wells, into an even grander place than it was before.”
I nodded absently, and he pushed himself up on one elbow to regard me. “What? None of this pleases you?”
“She is still out there.”
He nodded, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “That’s why I’m here. You and I are going to find her.”
“What!” I hissed.
“Shhh!” His put a finger to my lips. “Keep your voice low. There are minders and tenders and servants, valets, chambermaids, grovelers, scrapers and watchers of every stripe just outside your door. If they knew you were awake they would burst in here like a tide.”
I sighed. “It will be my lot from now on. They’ll keep me locked up like a doll in a glass case. Even if I insisted, or made it a royal order, they’d gang up on me and insist it was ‘for the good of Mars.’”
“Exactly. Now that the danger to the republic is perceived to be over, things are quickly reverting to normal. We will never see another exciting moment in our lives.”
“True.”
He sat up on the bed, but kept his voice low. “Now let me ask you. What are the chances of finding Frane with Army patrols bumbling about the countryside and looking under hay bales?”
“None. She will hide, using my mother until she is no longer useful – and then, once again, Frane will attack somewhere up the line.”
“Exactly. But now let me ask you: what are the chances of two lone trackers, one of them an expert at hiding and stealth, bringing Frane to ground and saving your mother?” He smiled.
I could not help it, my voice rose. “They would never let us do it!”
He continued to smile. “Of course they won’t! That is why we will have to sneak out under their noses!”
And then he told me his plan.
I was patient, though I felt like anything but. The better part of the week was spent in regaining my appetite (much of it by Darwin’s excellent cooking – which also enabled him to have run of the kitchen and secret away the provisions we would need), endless meet
ings with ministers and counselors, and public displays from my balcony to the cheering populace. All the while, Darwin and I planned. Besides food, he found the proper clothing and, in a final stroke of brilliance, enjoined Miklos, who had returned from the north pole, to secret us out of the temporary capital.
During that time the expected news was received that Frane was nowhere to be seen. It was if she had dropped off the face of the planet, and my mother with her.
Finally, the day came. Both Darwin and I were fit and hale again, and when the final audience of the day arrived, a hulking gypsy who I well knew, he strode into my chamber after his announcement with my husband under his arm like a sack of wheat.
“How we worried!” he boomed, dropping Darwin to the ground. He stomped forward to embrace me. “We dug and we dug and we dug – but always there was more ice! Finally, when a storm came, we were forced to leave! But never for a moment did I doubt that little fish” – here he picked Darwin up again – “would let anything happen to my Queen!”
He dropped Darwin and went to one knee before me.
“Are you sure about this, my Queen?”
I nodded. “It must be done.”
“Already my gypsies are moving over the hills and villages, and there is word that the evil one is farther east than was thought.”
“Then that is where we will start.”
“We will always be close by,” he vowed, and I took his giant paw in my own. “Then I will not worry,” I said.
I heard and smelled rather than saw my own escape. Dropped from the window of my audience chamber in a sack to the ground below, as was Darwin, and then the dog Hector, I felt the quick descent and none too gentle transfer to the back of a wagon. The sack smelled of oats, which made me want to sneeze. Other sacks, which were piled around us, some of them atop my own, contained everything else we would need.
I felt the jostle and shake of the wagon as its ponies were reined into motion. We traveled for perhaps an hour outside of Bradbury, during which time, no longer caring for the dry smell of oats, I cut a slit in my bag to breathe the late day air.
Instead, I smelled the manure sacks which Miklos’s men had piled atop everything else to discourage close inspection – especially after our disappearance had been discovered.
Which didn’t take long, because after perhaps another half hour the cart came to a grinding halt, and I heard the driver questioned in mumbled tones. The words became more heated until the driver said, “Take a whiff, then!” I felt one of the bags above me lifted away, and then heard a grunt of disgust.
“Happy, then?” the driver snorted, and the bag was dropped back into place.
Soon we were back on our way.
Though I still longed for the smell of oats, the odor of manure never smelled so sweet.
We emerged in starlight. A small fire was burning, and Darwin immediately began to prepare a meal. Our driver would not stay to eat, but immediately mounted the extra pony which had been tied to the back of the wagon and rode off.
“Good luck! It was Miklos’s wish!” he called, raising a hand in farewell.
The night was still.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Not too far from the last sighting of Frane. From here we head due east. Miklos’s people have to be careful, because everyone is wary of strangers these days.”
He handed me something roasted and spicy, and, thankful for my appetite, I ate.
I looked down at Hector, whose big eyes studied me greedily. He barked once, and then sat there with his tongue lolling.
Darwin laughed and tossed him a morsel from his own meal, which Hector devoured.
“This isn’t dog, is it?” I said, warily, holding up my meal.
“Of course not!”
I gave Hector a bit of my own meal.
“Can we rid ourselves of the manure at least?” I asked, joking.
“No!” he said, which surprised me. “For now, we are two traveling farmers who sell manure.”
My newly returned appetite began to leave me.
“Perhaps in a few days, after we make a few sales, we can rid ourselves of it and become mere peddlers.
“Not soon enough for me.”
And that’s what we did. We met a farmer who – after Darwin allowed him to rob us in a transaction for the manure just enough so that he felt kindly toward us, but not enough so that he became suspicious of us – informed us over his table that two strangers had, indeed, been this way not the week before.
“Strange they were, too,” the farmer said, smoking on his pipe and scratching his whiskered chin. I thought of Pelltier’s cigarettes, and almost gagged. “One of ‘em was plain mad, and the other never showed her face or paws. All bowing and thankee and good day. The other just stared into space. Then they were gone east.”
“What’s east of here?” Darwin asked innocently.
“Hills and more hills, until you get to the town of Opportunity.”
“That’s quite a name for a town.”
The farmer smiled, showing a distinct lack of various teeth. “‘There ain’t no opportunity in Opportunity,’ the saying goes here.” His chest puffed out a little and he leaned back, blowing a smoke ring. He waved his pipe stem at us. “And thing is, you might want to watch yourselves in that town, yes indeed. They ain’t as kindly in transactions to wandering peddlers as I.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his table, and smiled.
“Now I believe we were going to discuss rent for a night’s lodging?”
The next morning, a beautiful clear one, found us on the road, climbing and descending hills. The countryside was pretty but monotonous, and soon I tired of what looked like the same bubbling brook or the identical grove of junto tress or similar clusters of ancient rock huts, shaped like beehives, and for the most part demolished.
“Did you know that ancient feline hermits used to live in these structures?” Darwin informed me, and I pretended that I did not already know. We were cresting yet another hill. Even Hector was bored, running ahead to scout, then, inevitably, stopping to lie down in the sparse grass by the side of the road to wait for us when nothing of interest presented itself ahead.
This time he began to whine excitedly, and ran back to jump into the cart and sit up beside me.
“What is it?” I asked in a low voice, but Hector only whined with anticipation.
Darwin was finishing his history and anthropology lesson, and I pretended to listen.
The cart topped the hill.
“Wonderful!” I cried, and Darwin said, “Why thank you, I had no idea you were so interested in ancient monks–”
“Not that – look!”
Below us was the dirtiest place I had ever seen in my life.
Thirty-Six
Opportunity indeed! More like Red Dust Town, with plumes of airborne dirt hanging over the streets like permanent clouds. The residents of this shanty village wore a permanent layer of filth on their fur, which gave them a strange, almost insubstantial look. You felt as if you were beholding them through a crimson fog. I began to cough almost immediately, which brought little notice because almost everyone else was doing the same.
Between bouts of hacking, I turned to my husband. “Why is it so – cough – dusty here?”
He pointed to the street below us, as well as the surrounding hills. “This town – cough – could only have been built by fools. It’s set – cough, cough – in a bowl, with a perpetual breeze on a bed of red silt. Madness!”
Every building was covering in a fine layer of dust, and I could not tell haberdashery from general store. In fact, there were no markings on any of the buildings, which puzzled me. But there was one large structure in the near distance which everyone on the street was either coming from or going to, so we headed there, wiping our eyes and sniffling.
Hector, his eyes closed, was snugged down between us in the wagon, making noises of complaint in the back of his throat.
The doors of this structure were hu
ge and thrown wide, with an aisle as wide as the main street leading in. We passed through strips of plastic sheeting which hung down from the top of the entry, and suddenly the dust and dirt were gone.
“Ingenious!” Darwin remarked, looking back. The strips kept most of the filth outside, and allowed for a free atmosphere within.
We found ourselves in a huge indoor bazaar. To either side were booths and tables set with wares and food. Rich aromas filled the air. There was the sound of laughter and the shouts of vendors.
“Welcome to Opportunity!” said a little feline to our right, stationed in a booth. Before us was a lowered gate.
The little fellow smiled, showing even less teeth than our recent farmer acquaintance. “I’d say you’ll need two spaces to fit that wagon. That’ll be a tenner, please!”
Darwin paid him, and the little cat, red as the dust outside from head to foot, bowed. “Been here before?” he inquired, as if he already knew the answer.
“We’re from out west, thought we’d try the waters here.”
The little fellow cackled. “Waters! There’s no water for miles.”
“Why, may I ask, is there a town here at all?”
There was a smaller wagon behind us, the driver beginning to complain about our slow pace, but the little feline was only too happy to give us the short history of the town.
“Ever seen how rock candy grows, mister?” he asked. Before Darwin could answer he went on. “You start with a string in a glass o’ sugar water. Pretty soon some of the sugar sticks to the string. Then more, and more. And before you know it you got a whole lot of candy.”
“Move on!” the irate driver behind us shouted, but the toll taker ignored him.
“Fellow named String, of all things, camped here a hundred years ago. Then, he wakes up and there’s another camper next to him, then another...”
He laughed and waved us through. “Lots 57 and 58! End of aisle 15!”
As we moved through we heard him beginning to chat with the irate driver, and charge him twice what he had us.
Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy Page 15
