Return - Book III of the Five Worlds Trilogy

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Believe it,” Shatz Abel said, and now he showed anger. “I feel helpless, and I don’t like it. I promised that boy king that I’d get him back to Earth, and I did that. But now there’s precious little any of us can do to help him, now that he’s there. Once Cornelian turns his eye on Earth, that’ll be that.”

  Yar brightened. “There’s always the Three Comets!”

  “That they’ll smash Mars to bits? Ha! I’ll believe that when I see it. The Machine Master’ll waylay ’em, or whatnot.”

  The pirate looked up into the false dawn of SunOne. “No, my friend,” he said, “at this point the High Leader of Mars holds all the cards.”

  Chapter 8

  “She is curiously strong,” the High Leader said, as he rested in the oil-filled half tub mounted on a rodded pedestal that served as both his bed and lubricant bath. He had decided to combine his monthly rest and renewal with business and repair, and one hand hung languidly from the side of the tub as the Machine Master worked on its bent digit.

  The Machine Master, whose mind always seemed to be somewhere else, especially, these days, grunted as he worked; there was a tweak of electric spark as the finger was suddenly jerked back into its normal position.

  “That nearly hurt,” the High Leader remarked.

  “It is fixed,” the Machine Master answered tonelessly.

  “I had no doubt that it would be,” Prime Cornelian said, still groggy from the bath itself. His pores felt as if they had been packed with silk, or smooth jelly; he felt almost liquid himself.

  “You should rise soon,” the Machine Master commented; he was packing his tools into a slim case and rose to leave.

  “I have not finished speaking,” Comelian said.

  The Machine Master looked up at the High Leader, who floated like an insect on the surface of a pond; the tub was highly polished chrome; the room itself, the decking, the octagonal walls, and the sectioned, domed ceiling were mirrored and reflected a hundred High Leaders and Machine Masters throughout the room, like a kaleidoscope.

  Cornelian’s eyes, glazed with oily film, studied the Machine Master of Mars. “Have you begun work on what I requested?”

  “I have been busy with many things.”

  “Don’t speak in circles. Yes or no.”

  “Of course. It will take some time.”

  “I have no doubt. But speed its progress.” The High Leader lifted his repaired finger to study it, working its smooth hinges in a flexing motion. “Remarkable.”

  “I am also at work on a device to counteract the comets.”

  “Of course. That is important, too.”

  “More important, I would think.”

  The High Leader let his hand sink into the bath. “No. I require my project first. Before anything else.”

  There was hesitation before the Machine Master replied, “As you wish.”

  “Always. Now you may go back to your dungeon. You may deactivate the lights as you leave.”

  Without saying another word or bowing, as was required, the Machine Master turned and left; brushing his hand over a switch, he lowered the lights as he exited.

  “Someday,” Prime Cornelian said listlessly to himself, “I will reward his impertinence.” The hollow drip of oil from the tub to the floor echoed in the chamber. “With death.”

  He sank into the oil bath completely, letting out the thinnest of sighs.

  Sam-Sei, Machine Master of Mars, negotiated the levels of the building by foot, passing busy ministries of war; offices awash with the activity of cataloging booty; other offices, bright with light, where prisoners were cataloged or condemned; offices of the Martian Marines, of the Red Police, of the Red Youth, of the Children of Venus and Children of Titan, which title had been recently changed to New Children of Mars; offices filled with bulging files; offices filled with the buzz of electronics; offices filled with other, smaller offices; offices filled with bureaucrats in search of bureaucracy, where spies lurked, where minor functionaries sought advancement, where children turned in their parents for treasonous offenses, real or imagined, where cooks cooked, where important-looking men in tunics did nothing at all, where wash was washed, forgotten treasures were stored, garbage was processed, bodies were cremated, rats lurked, things that ate rats hid; until, nearly an hour later, he reached the depths of his dungeon laboratory, Deep in the Martian soil like a stake driven into sand, its walls drizzled with scant moisture from a nearby aquifer, its dark recesses filled with ancient machines exposing their innards for use, racks of frayed parts, storage bins, works in progress. There were deeper corners where even stranger things lurked, half-finished projects, projects forever under construction.

  Sam-Sei made his way to the most cobwebbed of these corners, moved aside a bin on wheels, a dusty, tall, conical-shaped booth, also on wheels and empty of parts inside. Behind it, out of sight of the High Leader’s most secret of SpyEyes (which the Machine Master had, of course, constructed himself and made sure contained a blind spot, knowing that Cornelian would have one installed in this chamber) was a satchel filled with very specialized tools; this he lifted, fingered the teleportation device in his tunic, and was gone from his laboratory.

  He arrived in almost instantaneous time within his other laboratory a thousand miles away on Mars, hidden under an ancient crater bed in the Arabia Terra region. It was similar to his first laboratory, only more brightly and artificially lit; and no aquifer ran nearby, which rendered it bone dry.

  “Good day,” Sam-Sei said matter-of-factly to the figure stretched out horizontally in a stasis web surrounded by a containment field: the effect was as if the figure were lying on a nonexistent gurney. The Machine Master set down his tool satchel, opened it, and drew out an elegantly long instrument; he bent over the prone figure and dispassionately studied the face, which stared up at him wide-eyed with something like terror.

  “You wish to speak?” the Machine Master said.

  The eyes, fighting the containment field as well as the stasis web, flicked slightly.

  “Very well.”

  Turning to a nearby table bearing more conventional tools than the one he held, the Machine Master found the device that controlled the containment field and deactivated it

  The figure, naked save for a loincloth, thrashed in its web; still bound by the web’s stasis field, it appeared to be boxing in midair on its back.

  “You must calm down or you will not be able to speak,” the Machine Master said.

  The other calmed its movement somewhat; but the terror remained in its eyes and its mouth opened to let out a hoarse yet loud whisper.

  “You—must--stop--this!”

  “That is not an option,” Sam-Sei said.

  “Cruel!”

  “This is not a valuable conversation.” The Machine Master reactivated the containment field, throwing the lean figure out rigid and once again holding it tightly.

  “Time to begin, for today,” the Machine Master said.

  Even bound by two fields, the figure sought to fight and writhe. Its already lidless eyes drew even wider with terror as the Machine Master retrieved his elegant instrument, clicking its back end; from the front end issued a soft blue light, long and thin and sharper than any knife blade.

  The Machine Master bent over the figure’s face and adjusted the containment field until the thin line covering the figure’s upper lip was free of the field, leaving it bare for cutting.

  The figure’s lower lip had already been neatly sliced away, leaving the gum line and lower teeth exposed.

  The Machine Master worked diligently and carefully—as if he were working on any of his machines, even though this one sought to fight madly, rigid with mad fear and eyes filled with more than physical pain.

  “Do not even try to move,” Sam-Sei said mildly, giving advice. “It will only make it worse.”

  Amazingly, the prone victim was able to make a sound like hurt, deep in its throat; fighting blindly against the field, it was able to move its upper
lip ever so slightly, making the Machine Master’s cut suddenly uneven.

  “That will only prolong it,” Sam-Sei said testily. He straightened and worked on the containment fields, making the web restrict the figure’s movements even more. Then he lightened the containment field around the upper lip, binding it tight as ice.

  He retrieved his instrument and continued his work on the upper lip, restarting from one end and making the entire cut a bit higher, to banish the unevenness.

  “I would have thought, Wrath-Pei,” the Machine Master said, “that you would have wanted my handiwork to be as elegant as your own. For in the end,” Sam-Sei said, pausing momentarily in his work to look into the horror-filled eyes of his brother, “you will look exactly like me.”

  Chapter 9

  Trel Clan, faux child, waited, and watched, and waited.

  His days were filled with as much empty space as they had been when he worked in Titan’s Ministry of Foreign Import Trade, Second-Class Division, Expendable Goods (MFITSCDEG). There, he had been a minister with a desk and no discernible job; here, he had no desk. Being a Titanian child on Mars was as much of a mindless activity as being a Minister of Nothing. He was used to wasting time.

  And waiting.

  Waiting was what he did best. For within Trel Clan were two things: hatred and lust. If he had thought on it, which he did not, he would have discovered that these two qualities had always existed within him, with room for very little else in the way of appetites. He had only been waiting to have them given form and function.

  Again, if Trel Clan had been subject to self-reflection (which, again, he was not), he would have discovered that though his hatred had, up until recently, been formless and generalized, being directed more or less at the race of all other sentient beings, his lust had always been more localized. For in all those years before and during his ministration at MFITSCDEG, there had always been in the most backward recesses of his mind the feeling, if not the exact certainty, that the twenty successors ahead of him—cousins, aunts, uncles, and, yes, second and third cousins—to the throne of Kamath Clan, Queen of Titan, should not exist; and that he, Trel Clan, had right to that glorious throne. There had always been the (again) formless impression that he, a distant relative to the queen and for whom indeed the Ministry of Foreign Import Trade, Second-Class Division, Expendable Goods, had been created (after much begging by his mother, who had managed to do something Trel Clan himself never had done: meet the queen), more deserved to wear the crown on Titan than the queen, or her son Jamal, did. Such had been his lust.

  But now, hatred, the other of his appetites, had given concrete form and function to that lust, and made both of Trel Clan’s appetites not only solid, but within reach.

  They had become ravenous appetites.

  For now, finally, he had found in the Martians something to focus his hatred on. Here, now, was a race within the more general race of contemptible sentient beings, who had done something to directly stand in Trel Clan’s way after helping him halfway.

  They had not only subjugated Trel Clan’s planet—but made it extinct.

  They had, almost simultaneously, opened the door to the possibility of his lust being fulfilled, and then slammed it shut in his face.

  He hated them with depth now; with true unalloyed feeling.

  He would make the Martians pay.

  He, Trel Clan, former functionary at the Ministry of Foreign Import Trade, Second-Class Division, Expendable Goods on a world that no longer existed, suddenly first in succession to power on a world that no longer existed, would make the Martians pay for what they had done to Titan.

  To him.

  And so Trel Clan burned within, with two appetites. And waited, faux child.

  As so often happens, his waiting ended unexpectedly, for Trel Clan was one of those creatures with which serendipity, the most mischievous of the Secondary Fates, has sport.

  There were trips. The Titanian children—unlike the Venusian children, who were more prone to reflection and docility—were active of spirit and needed occasional stimulation. There were visits to the great Lowell Zoo, whose menagerie rivaled that of any zoo on any world; indeed, it had been exceeded in excellence only by that in Huygens City, on Titan itself. There were visits to the Martian Hall of Science, surreptitiously known as the Hall of War, since much of its display concerned the development of Martian weapons, ancient and modem. There were visits to the Botanical Gardens, resplendent of the mostly drier varieties of flora, mostly Martian and Earth desert.

  And then came a visit to the Circus Venus.

  Granted, this was not an educational visit per se. This in itself made the trip unusual—but, as stated, the Titanian children were a spirited lot and needed diversion. And the Prefect thought this the perfect diversion.

  “You have made such progress as New Martians that it has been decided you shall have a treat,” he said one morning, before the beginning of Lessons. His Screen image was less formal than usual, less strict, less severe. He almost … smiled.

  “And now that you are true Martians, it is only right that you enjoy a treat the way any Martian child would.”

  The Prefect’s face hardened slightly. “Let me be direct, here, and say that this trip is for New Martian children only. Venusian children shall complete their Lessons today, as always, so that they may one day return to their own world and rule it in the High Leader’s name and spirit …”

  This diversion from the main thrust of the Prefect’s announcement, amid whispered groans of disappointment from the Venusian children, went on and on, during which time Trel Clan tried not to fall asleep.

  “… however,” the Prefect said, his face softening again, “let me hope that you New Martians enjoy your visit with Circus Venus. Assembly will commence immediately. That is all.”

  The Screen went blank.

  “New Martian students rise!” the room attendant ordered; Trel Clan, along with the others of his tribe, stood and readied himself for assembly.

  “It’s not fair! The Circus Venus is from our world!” a Venusian child named Carlos whispered petulantly from his seat beside Trel Clan; and Trel Clan, following the manner of all schoolchildren which he had assiduously adopted for his disguise, stuck his tongue out at Carlos as he marched past toward the schoolroom’s door.

  The trip held no interest for him, and he adopted the blank gaze of neutrality and bare interest that seemed to work for him in such circumstances, keeping him solitary but not noticed. He stared out the window at desert dunes and red sand craters; at clusters of sandstone buildings in morning Martian light; at the beginnings of Lowell City, the spires of office buildings, the dominating tower of the former residence of the High Prefect of Mars topped with its black sickle of iron within a circle; at shorter buildings at the edges of Lowell City; and then, abruptly, at the beginning of the desert once more.

  And then, suddenly, tents amid sand.

  The brightness was startling and momentarily jostled Trel Clan out of his blank ennui. Against the backdrop of red sand and pink sky, the colors made him blink: cherry-red and snow-white stripes; a green like the skin of limes, liquid blues and pinks and lemons. Tent poles were striped like spiral staircases, green and white, red and white; even now, in the brightest part of the morning, there were Christmas bulbs alight, strung from tent peak to tent peak and pole to pole. Yellow straw covered the desert ground; thick black wires snaked through this forest of hay; tall signs proclaiming the wonders of the circus—SEE THE GIANT MAN OF GANYMEDE! TWO-HEADED LIONS WITHIN!–looked wet to the touch with glistening colors and lurid pictures.

  The transport parked in a straw-covered lot; and then, abruptly, they were left to their own devices when the robot attendant said only, “Reassembly in six hours,” and then reboarded the bus to turn himself off for that time.

  Clusters of Titanian children entered under the red and white WELCOME! banner stretched like a tortured prisoner between two outward-tilting poles, and, squealing with de
light, disappeared to the four corners of the circus amid sounds of barkers and the muffled roars of animals.

  Trel Clan, alone, entered blinking behind them.

  And soon became lost in wonders.

  Though the Circus Venus called itself such, it was really a Martian concoction of interplanetary origin. There had been, before the One-Day War, a circus on Venus of that name, and it had indeed entertained on all the worlds; but after the war, though the Circus Venus’s animal menagerie, props, and tents remained, the Venusian population of the circus had been reduced to zero. It was then that the High Leader himself, on examining the bill of lading when the circus’s physical property had been returned to Mars as plunder, declared that it should rise again.

  And rise it did, quickly to become the most popular attraction on Mars.

  And when Titan was defeated in the Half-Day War, even more wonders, pillaged from that world’s own amusement attractions, were added to the Circus Venus, making it truly the greatest collection of its kind any of the worlds had ever seen.

  It was these later Titanian additions that immediately drew Trel Clan’s interest, and after spending all of his allowable food credits on the sweetest concoction he could find (a mound of purple spun sugar mounted on a paper stick half as tall as Trel Clan himself, with a pastry center: for he had a sweet tooth that his Martian masters never indulged), and after devouring said concoction, he gave his attention over to this section of the circus.

  Elsewhere there were amazements galore: the sun had risen high enough to activate the solar rides, and Trel Clan was momentarily distracted to find a clutch of his classmates soaring over his head and calling down to him from what looked to be an unsupported cart; it was only after they had winged away, turning sharply to fly back to where they had come, that Trel Clan saw the near-invisible lucite rails that supported the coaster. Other rides, oval enclosures of lemon and green and jet-black, drove impossibly high into the atmosphere, hovered for a breathless moment, and then, with the attendant squeals of delight and fright of their passengers, plummeted back toward Mars before slowing at the last moment.