Tycho slid majestically away, revealing other, smaller versions of itself: dead, black-etched bleakness, parched basalt, and useless—wasn't that why there were only two Lunar colonies?
Sickened by the Moon's dead whiteness, Dalin ordered Screen to shutter the window.
He was now bathed only in amber light.
Retrieving a food packet and the jug of water from the open lockbox, the king ate and drank, and tried not to think about the coming death that awaited him.
Hours later, Dalin was awakened from a light sleep by the sound of the Screen gently beeping.
Even opening his eyes, the king still felt happily drowsy. It was easy enough to get used to weightlessness; and it was easy enough to feel completely relaxed when one's body had no drag of gravity upon it. Perhaps he would just slip off into sleep, thinking perhaps of Tabrel Kris and that kiss in the garden that now seemed so far away, when this hexagonal box smashed into the nose of the dead freighter, scattering Dalin and his dreams into a thousand pieces.
Finding Tabrel's face in his memory and floating it before his closed eyes, Dalin once more sought to drift off to sleep—but the Screen's insistent beeping became even louder, finally rousing him from slumber to anger.
"Shut up!" he ordered.
The beep ended, but the Screen said, "There is a communications pattern that has crossed my sensors. Do you wish to monitor it?"
Instantly awake, Dalin said, "Yes."
An urgent voice abruptly arose from the blank screen: ". . . deadline has passed, Governor Marsden. Do you think—"
The answering signal was weaker, sounding far away with a slight crackle. It was the voice of the man who had addressed Dalin in the recording: "There is nothing left to think! Acron wouldn't dare follow up on his threat! Even Besh wouldn't stand for it—it violates every treaty ever signed between the Four Worlds! It would mean total war!"
The urgent voice replied: "Everyone's been squeezed into -the shelter here, but I'm sure it wouldn't hold—"
"It would provide no protection at all! The shelter here was built to withstand a solar flare and nothing else! Yours is no better." There followed a grim laugh. "You would do better to squat down and stick your head between your ankles."
There was a moment of silence, and then the urgent voice, sounding resigned now: "Good luck, Governor."
"And good luck to you, Frey. Hopefully, this will all pass. That daughter of yours will play dolls with my daughter when we visit next month—"
The reception became garbled and then broke up completely. In another moment Dalin felt his enclosure rocked by a soundless wave, followed in quick succession by three others.
Voice subdued, Dalin Shar said to the Screen, "Open port."
The thin window Screen slid up.
With trepidation, Dalin maneuvered himself in front of it.
The white brightness of the Moon had been temporarily outshone by the remains of four explosion wakes. Two of them, closely spaced, radiated out like thinly spreading fans over Luna's limb. The other two were almost directly below him, beyond Tycho's rim, in the area where the second lunar colony had been. Here, the blast light moved up to the left of Dalin's hexagon, making a brilliant green streak, like a sickly, straightened-out rainbow in space.
Now there were two new craters below, black ugly acne scars, pitted and raw, down on the surface, side by side, smooth as sand within, the crater rim of one breaking into the second. Dalin fleetingly thought of a pair of ancient spectacles.
Where the colony had been there was a double hole.
Gradually, the beams dissipated, like contrails, and only Luna was left, with new scars, to dominate the sky.
Without prompting, the Screen said, "There is an update on our position."
"Give it to me."
The graphic illustration of the ghost freighter returned; the Screen zoomed in on the empty nose of the craft.
A slightly different area was highlighted in a red circle now, still pitted with angry-looking studs which would easily tear his fragile craft apart.
"Analysis of new orbit predicts collision with this section in one point eight days."
"Fine," Dalin muttered sarcastically.
The Screen returned to amber light.
The nearby blasts had knocked him askew in relation to the wrecked ship.
Now Dalin would suffocate before he was blasted to bits.
Chapter 18
The High Leader was in a foul mood.
It was not the fact that he was forced to do this imminent broadcast, to show himself in every home on the planet. The necessity of that was bad enough—although he accepted its usefulness and was ready to calm the fears of all Martians and assure them that the path he had set them on was the best one, with illustrations of what had occurred at Shklovskii to make his arguments more cogent, of course.
What bothered him was, again, that nagging at the back of his cogitating mind, the itching feeling on the inside of his carapace that something was missing, that there was something out of place that he should be attending to.
But, as he ticked off the various components of his campaign, he found that, at this time, he was exactly where he wanted and hoped to be:
On Mars, the population was on the verge of being completely won over, minus their entire old form of governance and subject to the whims of a new and seemingly omniscient ruler; with the bonus of a fanatic core of red-shirted followers, ready to carry out his cruelest wish and sharing his vision of a Mars dominating the Solar System; with the added bonus of a Machine Master so good at his job that it made Cornelian want to hug instead of strangle him.
On Earth, another stunned population was under the rule of a puppet government, ascendant through coup d'etat; their usefulness to Cornelian was proven by Acron's immediate willingness to use the Machine Master's impact weapon on his own people on Luna. Though Besh himself, horrified by the plan, would have to be monitored, Earth was a virtual nonentity on the stage at the moment; the fact that Dalin Shar was missing was at best a minor annoyance.
On Venus, a war was in waiting, with everything lining up as it should; the one problem would be to keep the engineer Targon Ramir from blowing up his -own creation. But things were growing toward readiness.
And Titan.
The High Leader felt a momentary clutch of anger in his core, a dyspeptic burning in his metal innards. He had never considered Wrath-Pei to be much of a threat; when he was a senator, before his . . . indiscretions forced his ouster and eventual banishment from Mars, Cornelian had always considered Wrath-Pei a brilliant dandy, more of an amusement than a danger.
But with distance came boldness, obviously—and now that Wrath-Pei had virtually conquered Titan, and not in the High Leader's name (here came that acidic feeling again), he would have to be dealt with eventually. However, Cornelian still could not work up a splendid hatred for the man or take him all that seriously. He was, after all, little more than a creative degenerate. If he was here now, standing before the High Leader, would he act so boldly? Cornelian would grab him with dual pincers, yanking his smirking, lecherous body from his gyro-laden chair, and simultaneously strangle and unman him.
Cornelian took a deep, bellowing breath.
There was, of course, the deeper problem that Wrath-Pei held Tabrel Kris as a hostage. A pawn to protect his own safety. There was some immediacy attached to that problem, some sense of urgency, but the High Leader had no doubt that he would eventually solve that difficulty. For now, it was enough to know that she was safe, even if there had been a marriage to the idiot savant Jamal Clan. The Clan claims that Mars and Titan were now united and that the Clan philosophy had a rightful place on the Red Planet were nonsense. The Martian people, at this point, would not dare to blow their own noses without the High Leader's consent.
No, that wasn't what was really bothering him. Something else ...
Something...
"Time to go on, High Leader!"
Pynthas's overexcited, dogli
ke visage was in front of Prime Cornelian, and he couldn't resist knocking the man off his feet with a casual sideways swipe of one front limb. The toady's cry of alarm and the sound of his hitting the floor gave Cornelian a little of the amusement he craved. Ah, if only there were two of Pynthas, so he could knock their heads together.
A technician, less bold than Pynthas, approached tentatively, then stopped well out of range to ask meekly, "Are you ready, High Leader?"
Cornelian waved a casual digit, as if to say, As ready as I'll ever be.
Instead he grumbled, "Let's get it done."
"Very well," the technician said. He indicated a place on a small spotlit stage behind them. "If you'll stand there . . ."
"Ah . . ." Cornelian brightened, seeing that the seal of Martian solidarity, the sickle within a circle of black iron, had been mounted behind him as he had instructed. He wanted every Martian to see this emblem and identify it with himself. As they watched in their homes on their Screens, he wanted them to—
But that was what he would accomplish now.
"Turn it on, or whatever," he snapped, blinking the vertical blue black slits of his eyes against the glare.
The technician made a rolling motion with his hand and mouthed a silent, Three, two, one
He pointed at the High Leader who, even if he hadn't been told, knew that the broadcast had begun—he felt the electromagnetic emanations in his own body.
"Martian citizens," the High Leader began, in a calm voice so unlike his own that he felt like bursting into laughter. "I am here to speak with you tonight about the grave crises we face andto assure you that we, as Martians, will prevail!
"As to the first point of your concern, the dastardly murder of the entire Martian Senate weeks ago, let me assure you that the perpetrators of this craven act have already been dealt with! It has been learned that these cowards, sent by Earth and assisted by Venusian agents, and based in the traitorous city of Shklovskii here on our own fair planet, were sent to foment rebellion and chaos! But they have been punished!"
Cornelian, now warming to his task, allowed some of his own deep spite to bubble up into his cardboard words. He knew that a dram of true hate was worth a liter of talk, and now he would illustrate once and for all, to all of Mars, that whatever they had heard, whatever rumors they had entertained these past weeks, there was only one direction they were all heading, and there would be only one leader taking them there.
"Make no mistake!" he shouted. "The solidarity of Mars will never be compromised! We are one people, under one banner . . ." he paused, pointing with true feeling behind him at the sickle within the iron circle, "and no one—no one—will ever take from us the destiny that we, as true Martians, hold within our grip. If need be, that grip will become an iron fist! If the other worlds want war, we will give it to them! If it is our destiny to rule all the worlds, then we will fulfill that destiny!"
He paused, breath bellowing in his body, his slitted eyes afire. He held one clutch of metal fingers up, balling them dramatically into a slow iron fist.
"If they want the taste of iron, they shall have it!"
He could almost hear the cheers of the weak-minded ones out there, the millions living with their rumors and fears all this time, now told that everything would be taken care of for them, that they didn't have to think anymore, to worry anymore—all they had to do was give up their souls.
Of course, there were a few who wouldn't go along—but that was what the Martian Marines, and the newly formed Red Police, were for.
"With your help, my friends, my true Martian brothers, we will be victorious in all we set out to do! If Venus wants war, we will give it war! We will fulfill our destiny to rule!"
He didn't need a Screen to hear the wild cheers, the anxiety being expunged in communal orgasm. After all, these techniques had all been worked out centuries before; it was like using a formula in a textbook. Soften up a population with terror and uncertainty, innuendo and fear, then ride in to save them. Prime Cornelian was almost bored with the actuality of having to say the words.
"All hail Mars!" he shouted, raising the fist again; and then the technician, as previously instructed, cut the broadcast, and the chore was over.
It was only then that Cornelian noticed that Pynthas, rather than rushing out to congratulate him on what a fine job he had done, was hiding back in the shadows, pale as sand.
"What is it?" the High Leader commanded.
All the techs—everyone—were as pallid as Pynthas.
"I asked a question. What happened?"
With a lithe movement forward, Cornelian caught the nearest technician in his grip and drew him close to his oil-smelling mouth.
"TELL. ME," he hissed loudly.
"A n-newscast from V-Venus," the technician croaked. "While you w-were speaking."
"And?" Cornelian asked murderously. He noted with disgust that the technician had wet himself.
The technician was turning bluish white, his eyes so close to the High Leader's own that he could make out the hair-thin retinal wires deep within them.
Everyone else had shrunk back into the shadows. "An exp-plosion," the technician squeaked.
"TELL ME!"
"One of the d-deton-nation tubes. On a f-feeder st-staion. They've s-set it off."
Prime Cornelian saw nothing, heard nothing but his own scarlet rage. A high-pitched keening, which he realized much later was the sound of his own voice, filled his head and mouth and eyes.
When he came out of it, when he began to think again, the studio was empty and Prime Cornelian, High Leader, was forced to clean up the mess on his front digits, his hands, by himself.
Chapter 19
The breathing of oxygen was not an easy thing.
But Kay Free did it, as she did most things, with grace and with an absolute minimum of motion.
She had only been in water one other time that she could recall. And that had been very long ago, at least a millennium, by the human standard. She had not liked it then. But that had been before she had learned many things, most of all patience, which had carried her through nearly everything in her life.
"Life—now, there's an interesting thing," Pel Front said, swimming close by. He was inhabiting the body of what Kay Free thought was a rather comical fish, with long horizontal fins and tiny cilia along the top and bottom of its lengthy body, which propelled it along and also kept it in place. Kay Free herself had chosen the body of a flattened sea-thing with both eyes on one side of its brown body, which kept itself nestled into the silty mud at the bottom of this shallow sea. Her amusement at Pel Front's choice must have somehow showed through the united expressions available to the fish, though, because Pel Front managed to make his own host form a passable frown on the wide-toothed mouth below its undulating whiskers.
"There, there, Pel Front—there's no need for annoyance!"
"Annoyance at being here at all!" Pel Front answered in a huff. "I question the reason for this meeting in the first place—"
Before Pel Front could drive himself into further exasperation, the third of their party, Mel Sent, arrived with her customary loud entrance.
"Ah!" Kay Free said, as the huge carriage of Mel Sent's host, a whalelike creature half again as long and wide as the largest Earth whale, with bright blue and white stripes alternating down its length, and eyes large and luminously deep black like monstrous, polished stones, reared itself up before them, disturbing the mud around Kay Free to the point that nothing could be seen until it settled.
"I am here—finally!" Mel Sent announced. "Then we can begin—" Kay Free attempted mildly, knowing the futility of the gesture.
"We can begin nothing until I tell you what I wish to tell you!" Mel Sent said.
Pel Front's sound of impatience was audible—but ignored by Mel Sent. Through the settling murk, Kay Free made out another frown on Pel Front's whiskered face and secretly smiled to herself.
"I was detained—forever, it seemed!" Mel Sent explained theatr
ically. "First there were matters to attend to at home, and then—"
"How is your mother?" Kay Free offered mildly.
The huge visage of Mel Sent's host turned ponderously toward her and the eyes, if possible, became even larger.
"Mother is Mother!" Mel Sent rumbled. "She always will be Mother!"
"I see," Kay Free said.
"And that is besides the point!" Mel Sent continued. "The point is that I was detained—"
"That's all very well," Pel Front snapped peevishly. "And I'm sure we're all very interested. Only we're here for business, and business is what I insist we get down to."
"When I say so!" Mel Sent roared.
Pel Front and Mel Sent faced each other silently for a few moments, and Kay Free was about to intervene in the coming argument when the calling came to her and the world went suddenly silent. Her two companions, also, had ceased even to breathe, their host bodies, absent of the movement of fin or cilia, responding in their own kind: Pel Front settling gently to the ocean floor and Mel Sent, buoyed by the air in her host's massive body, merely appearing lifeless as she hung in place.
In the moment of supreme silence, when Kay Free felt everything in existence lifted away from her—the duties of life, thoughts of existence or less weightier thoughts, worries, awareness of self—she felt now, as she always felt at these moments, as free as anything can feel. Free of everything save being itself.
"Yes, my Life," she prayed in an unapprehended whisper.
The moment of freedom extended, to the point that deep within Kay Free, in a place she was not even aware of, rose the vague thought that her host, deprived of oxygenated water, was dying. And in that small place she was alarmed.
And yet the moment of blissful emptiness went on.
"Yes, my Life," she repeated, knowing now that she was waiting for something that had never been said before.
Into her, into the others, came a knowledge, filling the void of bliss.
A kind of gasp escaped Kay Free.
Then suddenly the calling was over and Kay Free was pushed whole back into the world.
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