Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy

by Al Sarrantonio

  When I reached the top she was waiting for me twenty feet away.

  “It will give me great pleasure to kill you before we all die,” she said.

  I drew my own blade and advanced on her.

  “Prepare to die, Queen,” she said. “Just as Haydn and Sebastian before you died.”

  “Where have you put the charges, Frane?” I asked.

  She smiled madly. “Your king is minding them, of course!”

  She extended her tongue and licked at a spot around her lips, removing a spot of the red color. Then she drew her tongue over her crimson forearm, making a streak. “This is pure mocra,” she said, licking again. “It is all I have left, but it will be enough.”

  “What do you mean, my king–“

  She cackled, a strangled sound, and indicated a spot below and to her right with the tip of her sword. I looked down to see my husband, bound and gagged, staring up at me, surrounded by the explosives she had taken from the caravan.

  “Darwin!” I shouted, but at that moment Frane, shrieking “Die!” attacked me, slashing her sword down in a vicious arc. I blocked her, and she drove at me again and again, pushing me along the catwalk which now swayed with our efforts.

  She was insanely strong, and I felt myself losing to her. I was forced back, until she had me against a stanchion, and then crouching with it at my back. She rained blow after blow which I was barely able to parry. The fire in her eyes was madness itself.

  “Die! Die!” she screamed, driving me down to the floor of the catwalk.

  With a last gasping effort I thrust my blade up at her, and somehow found her breast.

  Reeling backwards, she screamed in pain.

  Fighting for breath, I pushed myself up and advanced.

  A blot of blood appeared on her red tunic, and she looked down at it in wonder.

  “The kit has claws,” she said.

  She leaped at me, finding strength, and we battled once more.

  Again she drove me back, but this time I gave as well as I received, and drove her back.

  Once more I cut her, below her arm.

  Her crimson features blossomed in rage, and she brought her blade down, driving me once again to the floor of the catwalk, which swayed like a kit’s swing.

  She stumbled for a fraction of a second, and with all of my strength I drove my blade up into her breast, deeper.

  She gasped and dropped her sword, which slid from the catwalk and fell, rattling on the floor below us.

  She staggered back, clutching at her breast, and I followed her, jabbing again and again, finding flesh.

  She dropped to the floor of the catwalk, and lay back, gasping.

  “Come close,” she begged, her voice a dying rasp.

  When I took a step toward her she drew a dagger and sought to cut me with it, howling.

  I moved aside, avoiding the thrust.

  Then, suddenly, she dropped the blade and lay back, gasping.

  I thrust my sword four times into her horrid, twitching body.

  “This is for my grandmother, Haydn of Mars! And this for my father, and this for my mother! And this is for Mars, who you would have destroyed!”

  Finally her eyes clouded and then went blank, and she laid still and dead.

  Mars, the universe, and my life were free of her.

  Quickly, I climbed down the catwalk. The timepiece indicated there were two minutes to spare. I went to my husband, cutting him free, and between us we disarmed the explosives.

  And then, panting, barely able to catch my breath, I sat down and wept. I wept copiously for all the felines who had died at the hands of the butcher Frane. I wept for my father and grandmother. I wept for all the wars and the years of hardship and pain my planet had endured.

  My husband came, and held me.

  “It’s over,” he said, soothing. “After all these years, it’s all over.”

  And then, finally, I wept in joy for Mars.

  Thirty-Nine

  All of Mars celebrated.

  When we returned to Bradbury, it was in triumph. My mother, well now and attended to by her new lady in waiting Anna, was a new woman, and treated with the respect due her. Darwin and I were paraded like celebrities, to the point where I withdrew out of embarrassment. And still we had to appear at our window twice a day to greet the throngs who continued to come to the temporary capital, for if we did not, we were told, there was danger that the crowds would tear the building down in their joy.

  Newton, with Copernicus at his side, was not without a permanent smile on his face these days. He went on endlessly about the things he had already learned from Stella, and the things to come. He had already announced his retirement from the Science Guild, putting Copernicus in his place, so that he could devote his remaining years to the new knowledge from the Old Ones.

  And Wells would be rebuilt, on the ruins of the old city. It would be an even grander capital than it had been, with a new Hall of Assembly and a new palace.

  “It’s just as well,” I told Darwin, during one of our infrequent quiet moments together, “because we’ll need all the space we can get.”

  “What do you mean?” he said, charmingly dense to my meaning.

  I patted my not yet swelling belly.

  “You’re with kit?” he shouted, a smile splitting his face.

  I nodded. “Just.” And then I laughed as he threw himself around the room, cartwheeling and whooping for joy, like a kit himself.

  And all was happiness, until, a few days later, I learned of his plans.

  “What is this foolishness?” I screamed, storming into a meeting of Newton, Copernicus and Darwin. They looked up from their table as if they had been caught stealing.

  “Your majesty—” Copernicus began meekly, but I silenced him with a glare, which I then turned on my husband.

  “When were you going to tell me of this?” I demanded.

  “Soon...” he said meekly.

  I turned my ire on Newton. “And you condoned this?”

  “It was my idea, actually,” he said evenly. A ghost of a smile played over his lips.

  “I forbid it!” I screamed, and stormed out.

  Darwin waited an appropriate number of minutes, then came into my chamber and stood before me.

  “We’re going,” he said simply.

  Newton was at the door, still smiling. “There’s no real danger involved, your majesty,” he said. “Stella has been in touch with Earth directly. There aren’t many left on Earth, most of them left long ago for the stars, and it would be a shame not to take the opportunity. They are fascinated by what has happened here, and extended the invitation. The space ship is well equipped and the trip will only take a matter of months.”

  “We have to do it,” Darwin said.

  “Let someone else go!”

  “Clara,” he said, taking my paw, “I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t go.”

  “Copernicus and Darwin will be safe,” Newton said. “I would go myself but I want to devote my remaining time to Stella and her wonders.”

  “If that’s the way things are,” I said, conceding, “I have only one condition.”

  Forty

  It was the most beautiful day I could ever recall, with Sol a perfect gold coin in a crystal clear, bright sky. Which was odd, because our destination was in darkness, visible now only from the other side of the planet, hanging like a blue jewel in perpetual night.

  Newton was already gone, back to Stella at the North Pole, with whom he had formed an attachment that was at least affection and seemed even more. He had already assured us that by the time we returned the new city of Wells would be nearly finished. In the meantime, Bradbury would continue as the temporary capital, with my mother as Chancellor. She would have the assistance of fat Warton as Protector of the Government, under my appointment. He had proved so able as War Minister that it seemed a shame to not put his talents to work elsewhere. He would be a good Protector, and had the vote of the Senate and A
ssembly behind him.

  Mars was at peace, the first it had known in generations, and the people had settled into it with relish. Whatever dregs Frane had commanded had melted into the hills and tunnels, never to be seen again. Without the head, the body of the snake quickly died.

  The gypsies, under their leader Miklos, who would also accompany us, had been, by fiat, granted clan status. No longer would they walk in the shadows of Mars. This made Miklos quite nervous, of course, which was delightful to see. But not too nervous, after the ceremonial tapping with swords, to lift Darwin up by the scruff of the neck and pronounce, “Little fish! I am one of you now!”

  Also with us were members of the Science Guild, a few self important dignitaries and others deemed important or curious enough to fill out the delegation of fifty.

  It was a fine day, and a fine launch. With precise instructions from Stella, who assured us that the ship’s controls, once set, were mostly automatic, our lift-off was a smooth one. Our designated captain was one of Newton’s trusted air ship pilots, and Darwin sat in the co-pilot’s chair. I occupied the third seat, at one time used by a navigator, behind them. The rest of our Martian contingent was in the spacious crew quarters behind us.

  The launch went much as the first one Darwin and I had experienced. Our pilot was a lean fellow with small eyes which grew very wide when, in a matter of moments, we found ourselves high above Mars and hanging in space like an ornament. It was as if a switch had been through from light to dark. The sun, which had hung so serenely in the glory of a mid-morning Martian day, now hung in blackness.

  We studied our beautiful planet, its reds and browns and whites and greens, and I could hear the chorus of Ooo’s and Ahh’s behind us, for the crew quarters were appointed with their own porthole windows.

  Then the pilot pushed a button and the view began to fade behind us into a shrinking reddish ball, and the ship turned in space toward its destination.

  I held in my hands my most precious possession, the book of Old One composers that had been my father’s, and my grandmother’s before that. It was a connection with them, and the past of my planet, that was precious to me. I was told by Stella, through Newton, that they were informed that there were still musicians on our destination who still played the strange instruments that the Old Ones had composed music for, and that they would be happy to play a concert in honor of the Queen of Mars.

  I would make of the book a present to these strange Old Ones who had once regarded us as pets, and now stood as our equals.

  For that matter, what would they look like? Had evolution changed their own forms and features over two million years? Would they look like the pictures in my book – or something completely strange and alien? They had seemed particularly excited to hear that we had dogs as pets, and requested that I bring Hector, who now slept peacefully under my seat.

  Under the book was my other precious possession. In my swelling belly, I could already feel faint movement which Dr. Mandrake, who was also on the trip to attend to me, assured me would only increase. Already I knew there were at least two kits, possibly more. The first two, whether male or female, would be named Haydn and Sebastian.

  They would be born on the trip, making them children not only of Mars but of Space.

  The ship had completed its turn, and now pointed toward the tiny blue planet, far in the distance, that was our destination.

  I felt a strange stirring, as I always had when contemplating this jewel in the sky.

  Finally, I knew what it was.

  As the space ship accelerated, and the blue speck became ever larger in space before us, I understood at last the feeling that all Martians had always felt when looking this way.

  We were going home.