Modern Magic
Page 232
He was worried about what would happen when he reached the far wall. He had no idea how he would climb such a smooth, featureless surface. Programming the space machine on an alien planet to use as a shortcut might be rash. And, low-gravity or no, he would never be able to jump such heights.
Closer to the wall, a particularly odd-shaped boulder caught his attention. It was smooth and polished, tall as a house, and an odd color for the landscape, a brilliant Earth-sky blue. He was struck by how much it resembled a boat lying on its side. It even had a rudder, and on what would have been the deck, there were openings like hatches that revealed a hollow interior.
Fifty feet away, Richard stopped and blinked. This wasn’t a rock that looked like a boat. This was a boat. He rushed forward, stumbling over stones, slipping in dust, until he reached the deck. He ran his hand along the glazed translucent surface. The boat seemed to have been molded as a single piece; he couldn’t find a seam or a joint anywhere. The deck was tilted too steeply for him to climb to one of the hatches, but he had no doubt now that he was looking at an artificial construction.
Had Amelia built this? Why would she have built a boat on a desert world? He swallowed, trying to make sense of it.
He stepped back for a better view. His back ran into something hard. He spun around to find iron bars. In a whirl, iron bars thrust from the soil around him, in seconds joining over his head to trap him in a man-sized birdcage. The bars kicked up dust as they rose, and for a moment the dust cloud blinded him.
As the dust settled, he could see a shining steel rail arcing through the air from the top of the cliff down toward the boat. Sliding toward him along the rail, Amelia drew nearer. She was encased entirely in a shell of steel that mirrored perfectly her nude body beneath. She raced toward the cage at a speed that made Richard flinch, until she halted, instantly, inches beyond the bars. She reached her hand through the cage and placed her slender steel fingers upon his visor. Her face gave no clue as to what she might be thinking.
Then the small speaker near his ear buzzed, the noise rising and falling until it formed a robotic, mechanical voice. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”
The cage crumbled to rust. She wrapped her arms around him, not in a hug of greeting, but in the manner one might embrace a particularly bulky rolled up rug. With a lurch of motion the dusty red soil was left behind and they rose into the sky as the rail whipped around, back toward the top of the cliff. For a moment, he could see the landscape clearly, and it seemed to him that thin dusty roads radiated out from the steel dome. The valley he’d landed in was revealed to stretch straight as a mile-wide highway toward both horizons. Then his focus shifted to the steel dome, which was several hundred yards around and dotted with semi-transparent ruby panels. Just before they smacked into the wall of the dome, the metal split open like a giant mouth, and swallowed them.
Within the dome, the light was brighter than Richard would have guessed, and not as red as the outside windows would have indicated. A fountain bubbled with water in the center, and grass grew across the floor. Flowering plants bloomed everywhere in neat rows, next to blue walls crafted from the same material as the boat. Near the fountain was the husk of the spaceship Richard had seen in the museum, now disassembled into several cylinders that looked like little buildings.
Rail Blade sat him down, and his helmet speaker said, “You can take off your suit. There’s air in here.”
Rail Blade moved and the metal flowed away from her face and hair, until she wore only the metal shell from the shoulders down. She watched him intently as he unsnapped the clasps of his helmet and twisted it off with a grunt.
“Jesus Christ,” Richard said, lowering the helmet to the grass. He gulped in a big lungful of musty air with a scent vaguely reminiscent of a locker room. “I’m on fucking Mars!”
Amelia grinned. “Welcome to Xanadu.”
“Xanadu?”
“You know, like the poem. This is my stately pleasure dome.”
“Ah,” said Richard. “Hi.”
“Hi,” she said.
“Which one of us gets to ask the obvious question first?”
“I’ll go. What on Earth are you doing on Mars?”
“I like the way you phrased that,” said Richard. “That’s my first question also.”
“I’m here to terraform Mars as a gift to the human race,” said Amelia. “You?”
“Whoa,” said Richard. “My answer isn’t nearly as good as that.”
“May I assume Father sent you?” said Amelia.
“No. He’s dead.”
“Oh,” said Amelia. “Did my mother kill him?”
“What? Why would you say that?”
“I could see it in her eyes from time to time. That desperate look. And, no offense, but to my father, she was even more invisible than you. She was merely a vessel that Father used to give birth to us. Once we kids started flying around, Father’s attention was entirely on us. Can you blame her for being resentful?”
“No,” said Richard, relieved at her reaction. “That’s why I put the gun in her hand.”
“Bastard,” said Amelia, her eyes flashing to anger. Richard cringed, and threw up his hands, expecting her to hit him.
“What?” he said, relieved that she didn’t hit him, and that metal blades hadn’t popped out of nowhere and hacked him to bits. “Why are you mad? You almost killed him yourself.”
“He was still my father,” said Amelia, turning away. “What you said about putting the gun in her hands, your tone… you were making a joke of it.”
“I swear to God that was the most serious thing I’ve ever done,” said Richard. “I still don’t know if it was the right thing or the wrong thing, but it’s the thing I did. I have to live with it. I didn’t mean to sound insensitive.”
“So, he’s dead,” said Amelia. “Has Rex Monday taken over the world yet?”
“In 100 percent seriousness, I killed him, too.”
Amelia looked back at him, surprised. “How?”
“With the same gun,” said Richard. “And a time machine.”
“OK,” she said. “I might need some more details later.”
“I may have to draw a diagram.”
“And you came all the way to Mars to tell me?” said Amelia.
“I captured Rex Monday’s space machine. Getting here was no big deal, except for the part where I went insane. It’s just a hop and a skip back to Earth with this thing,” said Richard. “I’ve come to take you home.”
“No,” said Amelia.
“I thought you might say that. Look, your father’s dead. The whole war you’ve fought since childhood is over. You can be free.”
“I am free,” said Amelia. “Let’s be serious. I can’t imagine I’m popular back on Earth right now. I must be public enemy number one.”
“Rail Blade is,” said Richard. “But you don’t have to go back and live the life of a superhero. You could retire and live normally, quietly.”
“Richard, take a look around you,” said Amelia. “You are standing in the ruins of a lost Martian civilization.”
“Wow, yeah, I kind was wondering about that. I mean, I thought maybe you had done it for decoration, but, wow, this is some kind of news, isn’t it?”
“Do you know what you were walking in when I found you?”
“Dust?”
“A canal. The planet is covered with them. Ancient, empty, bone-dry canals, filled with thousands of ceramic boats.”
“Oh my God,” said Richard. “This is like some kind of science fiction novel come true. I mean, this is huge.”
“No,” said Amelia. “This is fiction.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is my father’s fiction,” said Amelia. “There are canals on Mars because it was something that captured his imagination as a kid. There are ancient ruins here for the same reason that Sarah could fly and I could pilot that spaceship just by telling the steel frame where to go. There were never any Martians. T
hese things are the evidence that this is my father’s universe. And it’s broken.”
“Broken?”
“It’s twisted. Corrupted. A parody of what reality must have been. We’ll never know what Mars would have been like if my father hadn’t triggered that bomb.”
“I hadn’t considered that,” said Richard. “I guess I see what you’re saying.”
“Then you have to understand why I can’t go back to Earth. It’s too dangerous.”
“Ah. Now that’s the leap I’m not making in my head.”
“Richard, do you know what I’m doing as we’re standing here talking?”
“Looking good,” said Richard.
“That’s sweet, but no. Right now, even as we speak, I’m touching the entire planet. There are vast quantities of iron here, that’s why the surface is red. And I’m slowly, steadily, driving the bulk of these iron ores to the core of Mars.”
“That’s quite a hobby,” said Richard.
“This isn’t a joke,” said Amelia. “There’s already a small rocky iron core at the heart of Mars, but it’s cold, silent. I’m augmenting it by adding the surface ores, and I’m vibrating it now, warming it. It’s a slow process. But in another decade or so, I’ll have stoked it to a white-hot state. Do you know what this means?”
“Spell it out for me,” said Richard.
“Once the core is excited, Mars will have a magnetic field. One reason Mars doesn’t have much atmosphere is that it doesn’t have a magnetic field like Earth’s to protect it from solar winds. The high atmospheric particles can’t be held by Martian gravity and get swept into space. I can put a stop to this.”
“So what you’re saying is, compasses will work on Mars.”
“That’s a trivial ramification, but yes.”
“And it will have an atmosphere?”
“Within our lifetimes. The heated core will once again drive volcanic action. Subsurface gasses and water will be injected into the atmosphere as volcanoes begin to flow. And I’m stripping the iron in the rusty soil from oxygen atoms. It’s where I got the atmosphere for this room.”
“Within our lifetimes? What happens when you stop heating the core?”
“I don’t know,” said Amelia. “It should take thousands of years to cool down to the point where the magnetic field will fail. I figure it will be humanity’s problem by then.”
“Wow. I guess I shouldn’t have been so flippant with that hobby comment. This is pretty impressive, Amelia. Where did you get the grass and plants?”
“And bumblebees, and worms, and dozens of other creepy crawlies. Father had made some do-it-yourself ecosystem kits when he was designing his domes. They fit nicely into the spaceship, along with about three years worth of MREs.”
“Meals Ready to Eat?” said Richard. “I’m surprised your father never invented meals in a pill.”
“Oh, I have those, too. But in another month or so, I should be able to start harvesting vegetables from the gardens.”
As she spoke, the room grew darker. The sun dipped ever closer to the horizon, and without a high atmosphere to play against, the light faded away at a surprising pace. In moments, it would be night.
“Sounds like you’ve got it all planned out,” said Richard. “But, it still doesn’t answer my big question. Why are you on Mars?”
“I’ve crossed a line, Richard,” said Amelia. “I’ve stretched my powers to a planetary scale. I’m never going to be normal.”
“But normal is just—”
“Let me rephrase that. I am normal. This is my normal. I need a world to touch, to play with. And I think Father gave me Mars.”
“Gave you Mars?”
“Think about it. It’s a perfect match. It’s a world covered in rust, iron oxides, waiting for someone to come along and free up the oxygen. It’s a world that could support an atmosphere if it had a magnetic field, and I have the power to kick the core into motion. It’s a world where canals that have never held water are already built, as if waiting for me to come along and fill them. On a more symbolic level, Mars is a world symbolizing war and violence. I am a weapon. I was born to be an instrument of death. Mars is the world where I can change from a sword into a plowshare.”
Amelia sat down by the fountain. It was crafted from the same blue porcelain as the boat in the canal. It bore an eerie resemblance to the fountain on her father’s estate. The look on her face was almost devoid of emotion.
“This is a broken universe. This is a broken world. And I am my father’s broken child. This is home.”
“You don’t sound happy about it.”
“I don’t know what happiness has to do with it,” she said.
“I know what happiness has to do with it,” said Richard. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve come to Mars to find happiness.”
“And instead you found me,” said Amelia. By now the light had faded to the point that her face was nearly hidden by the shadows.
“That’s what I mean,” said Richard. “I came to Mars to find you. Because you make me happy.”
Richard sat down next to her at the fountain. The feeling of déjà vu grew stronger. “I love you, Amelia.”
“Huh,” she said. “How desperate are you?”
“Not as desperate as you might think,” said Richard. “But it’s pretty simple. I like you because you are broken. I like the way you’ve fractured. My God, this is a no-brainer.”
“Really?”
“Really. You’re the most serious person I’ve ever met. I’m someone who’s always treated life as a joke. It must be true that opposites attract, because I recognize in you something that I’m missing. You have a certain magnetism, pardon the pun. It pulled me across umpteen million miles to find you.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this,” she said. “Are you trying to trick me into going back to Earth?”
“I’ve a better idea,” he said. “We can stay here. It will be nice to live on a world where everyone can see me. And I like the idea of our kids or grandkids waving at the first spaceships from Earth.”
“Kids? You’re getting a little ahead of yourself, Richard.”
“Come on. Admit it. You’ve missed me.”
“Yes,” she said, softly. “But that still doesn’t give you the right to come in here and start making plans for our children.”
“Sorry,” said Richard. “You’re right. I should have brought roses. You deserve a real courtship. Although I guess moonlight walks holding hands on the beach aren’t an option here.”
“There are two moons,” said Amelia. “You’ll be able to see them through the windows in a few more minutes. You’d be surprised how bright they are.”
“I may be all surprised out for the day, to be honest.”
“This from a man who’s just stepped across planets in hopes of getting lucky.”
“Babe,” said Richard, “all my life I’ve been lucky.”
Above Mars, Phobos and Deimos crept silently through the void, reflecting the light of a distant sun to cast shadows on the undiscovered ruins of the world below.
In the bright moonslight, to the eerie bow-saw drone of wind whipping over a steel dome, two lovers held hands, and kissed.
Epilogue
Meanwhile
A woman limped down the steps of the post office onto a nearly empty New York City sidewalk. Few people were out this Christmas morning, as a fierce wind whipped through the streets, blowing snow before it.
As the woman walked through the snow, a cloud of steam followed her, and a symphony of tiny hisses as the snowflakes vaporized against her skin.
She took shelter from the wind behind a dumpster in an alley. She dug around in the dumpster, grunting as she pulled out a large cooler, the battered green aluminum casing sporting several bullet holes.
“That you?” asked the cooler as she dropped it to the ground.
“No,” she said, taking a seat on the cooler. “Just the rats.”
“Was there anything waitin
g?”
“Nope,” she said, pulling out a pack of cigarettes from her coat.
“You sure you have the right P.O. box?”
“The key fit,” she said, lighting the tobacco with a glowing fingertip.
“Are you smoking?” asked the cooler. “Christ, I’d kill for a smoke.”
“You just finished regrowing your lungs and the first thing you want to do is smoke?” said the woman, who without any irony took a deep drag from the cancer stick.
“So what next?” asked the cooler.
“We check again next year,” said the woman. “Those are the instructions. If the boss disappears, we keep checking until we get further assignments. You in a hurry or something?”
“If the boss were back in touch, I reckon he’d whip up some kind of ray or something that would make my arms ’n legs grow back faster,” said the cooler.
“You are the last person who should bitch to me about missing limbs,” said the woman, breathing out a cloud of smoke.
“Don’t you ever worry that the boss might be dead?” asked the cooler.
“He probably has a plan for that,” said the woman. “He has a plan for everything. We haven’t heard the last from him.”
A loud sigh escaped from the cooler.
“What?” the woman asked.
“Next time,” said the cooler, “he should plan on robbing some banks.”
The End
About the Author
To research Nobody Gets the Girl, James Maxey studiously read 1,312,017 comic books, starting in 1973 with a Superman comic book that guest-starred Batgirl. With his mind warped by a steady diet of four-color pulp fiction, Maxey has proven unfit to mingle with ordinary folk and ekes out a living by doing things that even carny geeks find degrading, such as writing. Nobody gets the Girl has a sequel, Burn Baby Burn, which tells the story of just what happens when Pit Geek and Sundancer get together after years in hiding and decide to go rob some banks. James will have a new superhero series, The Butterfly Cage, coming out late in 2016. He’s also written a steampunk novel (Bad Wizard) and two fantasy series, the Bitterwood Saga and the Dragon Apocalypse Saga.