Star Binder

by Robert Appleton

  Sergei waves to me. Seeing him there, suddenly lit up like that, is impossible to describe. All I know is I have to get to him. It might help if I have my own light to guide me too. That’s what he was trying to tell me—to ditch my extra suit and let the glowsuit shine.

  But the river isn’t finished with us yet. The torrent ahead falls away into oblivion again. Watching Sergei disappear over the brink is a double-edged nightmare—there could be anything down there, and whatever happens to him...

  is going...

  to happen...

  to me!

  The drop isn’t as high or as painful as the first. I break the water below with my body shaped like a pencil. But that’s no consolation, because now that I can see ahead, I know for certain—this is only the beginning.

  The river widens, slows, the cavern grows enormous, maybe three times as big. Which would be good news for us except that at several points along either side the tunnel opens up, letting other huge subterranean rivers—or tributaries—spill in, feeding this watercourse. The result is absolute watery chaos. Current crashes against current from opposite directions, throwing up mountains of spume. A bit farther, another flow rushes in to sideswipe it all, creating an awesome high-against-the-wall curving torrent that looks like it has some kind of vortex in the middle. If the god of Mars ever flushed...!

  After that it gets even worse. Water piles in in such volumes I can’t tell how steep the river becomes or how many different tributaries pour in. It’s as though all the Arctic rivers are feeding into this one tube.

  How can I see that far ahead? Good question. Sergei’s more or less level with me, so it sure isn’t his suit lighting the cavern all the way down there. But it is blue light, exactly like that from our suits.

  I think I’ve been wet for long enough. There’s very little undertow here, and while there's still a current, it’s quite slow. I follow Sergei’s lead and make for the left hand bank. Where the river widens, so does the cavern, far beyond the edge of the water. The rock is flattish, icy but crossable. There might be an unexplored world down here, beneath the canyons of Mars.

  Rigorous exercise after a stint in freezing water is a survival must. It gets your heart pumping, your blood flowing. If we had on regular civvy clothes we’d have to take those off too, but our glowsuits are excellent insulators of body heat. Not only that, the energy generated by friction—our exercising—provides extra warmth and dries the suits. It’s part of the ingenious “layering” design of the fabric, and it saves our bacon because it’s bitter cold down here, well below zero.

  After shedding my outer suit to give us more light, I think about putting it back on. It’s an extra layer, designed for warmth. Light or heat: I’ll have to sacrifice one for the other. Sergei suggests we tie them around our waists for the time being. “It’s more important we see exactly where we’re going,” he shouts in my ear over the roar of the river, and points out the layer of ice covering every inch of rock from floor to ceiling. Icicles hang precariously from the roof, some bigger than us.

  “Sergei?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you noticed—the light’s gone from down there.”

  His face does its scrunchy scowl thing as he tries to figure something out.

  “It seemed stationary,” I add. “Like someone had hung a blue lantern—a really bright one.”

  “It was Sarazzin. It had to be,” he figures. “I’m pretty sure the Sheiker wasn’t wearing a Hex suit.”

  “I know that, but think about where the light must have been: somewhere high up. If it was stationary, how did Sarazzin get all the way up there so fast? He fell in about ten seconds before us.”

  “It’s possible he was trying to climb up. That’s why we saw his light. And now he’s fallen in again.”

  “Sergei, there’s no way anyone survives that, let alone has a chance to climb out in the middle of it. I’m telling you it’s not Sarazzin.”

  He points out a dim blue glow jabbing through pores in the icy ceiling, shortly before the first tributary. “Then who is it, genius?” he says. “Who’s coming this way?”

  “The same person who climbed out...there. Look, five metres ahead, spikes in the ice. He got out almost at the same place we did.”

  We follow the tracks leaving the river. They snake back to us, then arc ahead into another passage. This one runs almost parallel with the watercourse, a little to the left. The ice ends here, but we can still follow the wet drips on the bare rock. They’ve only just begun to freeze, which means our quarry passed through here very recently. It can’t be Sarazzin, for the reasons I’ve given, so the only buggo it can possibly be is—

  “Lohengrin!”

  The prince recoils with shock a few metres in front of us, after springing in from an adjoining passage. He lays a hand on his heart. Sergei, too, takes a guarded aside in order to steady his nerves. I'd half-expected this rendezvous, however. Lohengrin had vanished during the stork explosion. If he’d made a run for it, I’d have seen his glowsuit somewhere in the canyon. Which left only one explanation: the blast had thrown him into the river.

  He shakes our hands like he hasn’t seen us in a decade. “You guys, I wouldn’t—I mean I never expected this. When your light came over the waterfall just now, and then another one shone right next to it...”

  “We were wondering the same thing,” I reply, “when we saw your glow. I hoped it would be you. About time we had a pleasant surprise for once.”

  “Tell me about it. Come on—” Lohengrin turns and beckons us to follow him, “—I want to show you guys something.” He stops, turns back to face us, places a hand on each of our shoulders. “Are the others safe?”

  “Depends what you mean by safe,” replies Sergei. “Those bastards are all gone, I think. We only lost Sarazzin. Right, Jim?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “And Lys? Rachel?”

  “They made it.”

  He heaves a sigh of relief. “Then we won. Or rather you won. You guys really did it. And there were two Finaglers leading them! You're gonna have to tell me how you did it. Don't leave anything out.”

  Sergei and I leave nothing out. They're both stunned when I tell them about Rachel. Sergei in particular is convinced I'm exaggerating. She's quick as a fox, he says, but no girl could be that deadly. Maybe she got lucky, nicked a vital artery. I tell him if that was the case she must have got lucky about three dozen times in as many seconds. We swap theories about who she really is, where she got her training, as Lohengrin leads us along a much narrower passage pinched almost to our ribs at several points by a succession of chunky stalagmites. Then it climbs upward at a steep gradient for about twenty metres before forking both right and left. The noise of the big pour starts to increase.

  “I think this tunnel used to be an old water tube,” he explains. “It slopes down toward the river, just like the other tributaries.”

  “So why isn’t it flooded now?” Sergei asks.

  “Not sure. Maybe it's just obsolete. Those others are goddamn beasts.”

  That comment makes me snicker—the Prince of Rhea is now officially one of us, complete with buggo slang.

  “Okay, here’s what I wanted to show you.” He has to scream in my ear to make himself heard. Then he points us, not to the Biblical torrents surging out of the cavern walls in all directions, but to a series of tiny glints around the massive hole facing us. At first glance I think they’re gemstones inside the ice. But the way they’re spaced apart, almost evenly, and at the same distance from the mouth, suggests design.

  Lohengrin summons us back inside, away from the deafening noise. “So what do you think?”

  “Climbers,” answers Sergei. “They’re cams used by rock climbers, coated with ice. These caverns have been explored at some point. They must have wanted to get inside that tunnel. Maybe the only way they could reach it was to fire a tasker. Ping. When you’re climbing, those things do your job for you.”

  “I know. Expe
nsive tech,” says Lohengrin. “But I’m fairly sure you’re right. These caves have been explored, before the polar ice melt really got going. Before this place was flooded. So hopefully there’ll be other signs, other clues we can follow. I’m betting there’ll be other ways out.”

  “You mean like this obsolete tunnel we’re in,” I reply, eager to get involved. “You said it used to be a river, right? A tributary?”

  “I reckon so, given its shape, direction and gradient,” answers Lohengrin.

  “A tributary has to start somewhere. Why don’t we just keep hiking?” I shrug. “Hey, it’s better than nothing.”

  Sergei puts me in a gentle, playful headlock that still somehow manages to crick my neck. “It’s not just better than nothing; it’s not half bad, you little grid-licker.”

  “Thanks, you Russian goon.”

  Lohengrin stops us as we’re about to set off uphill. “Just one thing before we go, Jim,” he says. “I didn’t see anyone in the water ahead of you. Did you see what happened to Sarazzin after he fell? Was he wearing an oversuit as well?”

  “Um, yeah, he was,” replies Sergei. “He mustn’t have figured it out—that his glowsuit would light the way. Even if he saw your suit blazing over the torrent, he wouldn’t have known there was a bank to his left, where we got out, not without a light of his own.”

  “Or maybe he drowned,” I point out with more than a tinge of regret. I might not like Sarazzin—understatement right there—but the guy came through for us when we needed him. And that last kamikaze tackle was something I’ll never forget.

  “Same goes for the Sheiker,” says Sergei. “Do svidaniya, doorak!”

  On that note we begin our recce of the dry rock tunnel, hoping, not really expecting to find a way out. Not on our first attempt. Lohengrin reckons there could be an ancient natural network of caves and passages down here, and that before our terraforming hit its stride—feeding the rivers with melted polar ice—it was likely teeming with explorers and geologists, all eager to make that one “amazing discovery that would change everything.” Only none of them ever did. Life never did exist on Mars before man colonized it.

  No indigenous life, that is.

  The secret of the Hex, the portal, the dragonfly, those strange alien apparatuses we thought we knew inside out, is the key to a much bigger puzzle. A game-changer the explorers and geologists who scoured this place could only ever dream of. I've seen it with my own eyes! But I don't know what it all means. And the powers-that-be have gone to great lengths to keep it under wraps.

  As we scout the various passageways, I can’t help but let my imagination run riot. A thousand possible answers to the alien riddle of the Hex. The universe opens up, then collapses again whenever we reach a dead-end to one of the tunnels. I keep the interstellar musing to myself. Sergei takes each navigational failure personally, and snaps at any comment that isn’t constructive. Lohengrin, too, concentrates with a prickly determination I haven’t seen from him before. They’re both worried.

  Mentally mapping a subterranean network of passages is incredibly hard, not to mention dangerous. They all look so similar. I suggest scratching a symbol into the rock at the start of each new branch of the tunnel; that way we’ll know we’re not just retracing our steps. As for the rest? It’s that spatial awareness the DEMOs raved about in our reports, put to the ultimate test. Finding our way out of a maze, when we don’t know for sure whether there is a way out, is a cruel test even those goons on the Initiative Council might deem a bit much.

  We don’t find many of our own symbols, which is a testament to our geographical skills. It seems like we’re making progress—and uphill progress too—but we’re really just best-guessing in the blind. Uphill equals hope. Every time we hit a fork in the path, that’s our decision—to climb. The sky is our destination. Sometimes the passage is too narrow or too low for us to squeeze through, so we compromise and take the downward route instead. But that usually leads us into a new network through which we can navigate our skyward trend.

  When we’re tired, we rest. When we’re hungry, our bellies ache. And when we’re thirsty, we can always hear the rumble of water cascading through the rock all around us, in every direction, whether it’s there or not. After what feels like a solid day of exploring, we find yet another dead end: a section of the tunnel roof has collapsed, leaving a gap we could maybe get through if we relocated some really heavy rocks.

  Not today. We all agree that sleep is more important right now. It’s the least comfortable bed in buggo history, but we have two spare oversuits to share between the three of us. They make decent blankets.

  Our blue lights dim. Sergei starts to snore. In this artery of the underworld, even that can't keep me awake.

  This time I’m woken not by a dragonfly, but by a breath of fresh air and the words: “Sergei, Jim, you need to get up—you’re going to want to see this.”

  Neither of us cottons onto the relevance of the breeze wafting by until Lohengrin sticks his hand over the small gap left by the tunnel collapse. “Can you feel it—the draught? Last night I didn’t notice anything, but it woke me a few minutes ago. Maybe the wind just got up outside. Guys, this has to be a way out.”

  “Can you see any light through there?” asks Sergei.

  “No. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any further on.”

  “True. We don’t even know what time this is,” I point out. “It might be the middle of the night. So there wouldn’t be any light.”

  Encouraged, Sergei slaps us both on the back. “Right, you two, everything you’ve got. This might take a while, so I want you both to man up. No wimping out. Okay?”

  Lohengrin and I immediately stop nursing our sore backs and share a knowing glance. He’s probably thinking the same as me: Come back, Emperor Sarazzin, all is forgiven!

  The Minsk Machine has us clear the “girly” rubble first, then he wages war on the larger rocks. Some of them he can shift himself; most require all three of us to manage. Once or twice the removal of a key stone from the pile brings down more than we bargained for, which sets us back, but we persevere. By the time we’ve made the gap wide enough to climb through, my arms are about ready to drop off. Lohengrin’s are, too. Sergei simply slaps our backs in approval and ushers us through to the other side without a second’s pause.

  He’s decided we’ve been prisoners here for long enough.

  The passageway continues to rise for another few hundred yards or so, curving gradually to the right. We come across another collapsed section. This one we have to scramble over on our bellies. At the other side the ground is damp. Softer. It’s wet sand. A babbling stream winds to our right, skirting the rubble. It disappears into another tunnel. This latest collapse clearly dammed the watercourse at some point in the past, forcing the flow to change direction, and rendering the tube we’ve just been through obsolete. That’s the way of water: it always finds the path of least resistance.

  After drinking a few pints apiece, we plough our way upstream. Pretty soon we have to crawl on our hands and knees as the ceiling lowers to about a metre. The breeze grows stronger, strikes through us as the icy water splashes inside our suits at the collars. The first hint of pale light, reflected in the gushing flow, seems forever out of reach as we crawl, as though an unknown force is dragging it from us, spurring us on to an unattainable end.

  Suddenly the world opens up. The stars overhead have never seemed closer or so personal. They’re the spotters from around the galaxy, waiting patiently, glad to have seen us at last.

  We’re part way up the slope of a mountain. It reaches high into the firmament and plunges deep into the canyons. I can see a river snaking across the desert, lit by the cold light of Phobos. An orange-yellow glow in the distance resembles the last drips of melted pirate treasure oozing into a dream. It’s sunset. Somewhere over the wilds of Mars.

  CHAPTER 18

  All Rivers Lead to War

  The most important part of surviving a crisis
is to first admit that you’re in one. That might sound obvious, but, as Mr Ghosh told us several times in his class, man’s history is full of people who didn’t survive when they really should have. One of the main reasons was denial: they couldn’t face the fact that their lives were in immediate danger and so they either panicked or did nothing. Not that we can really blame them; if you’ve never experienced it before, you can’t know how you’ll react in a crisis.

  Luckily, Sergei, Lohengrin and I keep each other honest. Hopeful, but honest. “We can’t rely on being rescued, but we can make it out of here,” the prince assures us.

  Sergei echoes that sentiment a hundred different ways during our journey, but not always as diplomatically. “This is exactly why I didn’t want us to get on that shuttle,” he says, referring to the day he left me—or did I really leave him? “You thought this was going to be some big rock-hopping adventure, with Thorpe-Campbell holding your hand. But this always was military. Right from the start. I don’t think you guys get that. Doesn’t matter what he says, doesn’t matter what his big secret is, this whole thing will boil down to ISPA sneaking us into the war through the back door. That’s how their minds work. We might be in some special project, yeah, but so is every other guinea pig who gets stuffed with hay and hooey.”

  “Sergei, we haven’t even touched a rifle yet...as part of our training,” I remind him. “Those firing ranges I saw down the Hex corridor, they could be part of some other training program altogether. We don’t know what they have in store for us.”

  He shakes his head. “Well, I’m sick of saying ‘I told you so’. When we’re dropped into the sucky end of Splattersville, I’ll remind you one last time, Jim.” And to Lohengrin: “How’s the path ahead looking?”

  “Steep but steady. Some scree coming up. We might have to use our hands.”