Sarai Northe inherited that jewel, and brought it with her to bury beneath the foundations of the Cathedral of Olympus Mons.
In the end, you must choose a universe that contains yourself and Mars, together and perfect. Helix Fo chose a world built by viruses as tame as songbirds. Oorm Nineteen chose a world gone soft and violet with unrhyming songs. Make no mistake: every moment is a choice, a choice between this world and that one, between heavens teeming with life and a lonely machine grinding across red stone, between staying at home with tea and raspberry cookies and ruling Mars with a hand like grace.
Maximillian Bauxbaum chose to keep his promise. Who is to say it is not that promise, instead of microbial soup, which determined that Mars would be teeming with blue inhuman cities, with seventeen native faiths, by the time his child opened her veins to those terrible champagne-elixirs, and turned her eyes to the night?
Step Two: Become an Overlord
Now we come to the central question at the core of planetary domination: just how is it done? The answer is a riddle. Of course, it would be.
You must already be an overlord in order to become one.
Ask yourself: What is an overlord? Is he a villain? Is she a hero? A cowboy, a priestess, an industrialist? Is he cruel, is he kind, does she rule like air, invisible, indispensable? Is she the first human on Mars, walking on a plain so incomprehensible and barren that she feels her heart empty? Does she scratch away the thin red dust and see the black rock beneath? Does he land in his sleek piscine capsule on Uppskil, so crammed with libraries and granaries that he lives each night in an orgy of books and bread? What does she lord over? The land alone, the people, the belligerent patron gods with their null-bronze greaves ablaze?
Is it true, as Oorm Nineteen wrote, that the core of each red world is a gem of blood compressed like carbon, a hideous war-diamond that yearns toward the strength of a king or a queen as a compass yearns toward north? Or is this only a metaphor, a way in which you can anthropomorphize something so vast as a planet, think of it as something capable of loving you back?
It would seem that the very state of the overlord is one of violence, of domination. Uncomfortable colonial memories arise in the heart like acid—everyone wants to be righteous. Everyone wishes to be loved. What is any pharaonic statue, staring out at a sea of malachite foam, but a plea of the pharaoh to be loved, forever, unassailably, without argument? Ask yourself: Will Mars be big enough to fill the hole in you, the one that howls with such winds, which says the only love sufficient to quiet those winds is the love of a planet, red in tooth, claw, orbit, mass?
We spoke before of how to get to Mars if your lonely planet offers no speedy highway through the skies. Truthfully—and now we feel we can be truthful, here, in the long night of our seminar, when the clicking and clopping of the staff has dimmed and the last of the cane-cream has been sopped up, when the stars have all come out and through the crystal ceiling we can all see one (oh, so red, so red!) just there, just out of reach—truthfully, getting to Mars is icing. It is parsley. To be an overlord is to engage in mastery of a bright, red thing. Reach out your hand—what in your life, confined to this poor grit, this lone blue world, could not also be called Mars? Rage, cruelty, the god of your passions, the terrible skills you possess, that forced obedience from a fiery engine, bellicose children, lines of perfect, gleaming code? These things, too, are Mars. They are named for fell gods, they spit on civilized governance—and they might, if whipped or begged, fill some nameless void that hamstrings your soul. Mars is everywhere; every world is Mars. You cannot get there if you are not the lord and leader of your own awful chariot, if you are not the crowned paladin in the car, instead of the animal roped to it, frothing, mad, driven, but never understanding. We have said you must choose, as Bauxbaum and Oorm and Fo chose—to choose is to understand your own highest excellence, even if that is only to bake bread and keep promises. You must become great enough here that Mars will accept you.
Some are chosen to this life. Mars itself is chosen to it, never once in all its iterations having been ruled by democracy. You may love Mars, but Mars loves a crown, a sceptre, a horn-mooned diadem spangled in ice opals. This is how the bride of Mars must be dressed. Make no mistake—no matter your gender, you are the blushing innocent brought to the bed of a mate as ancient and inscrutable as any death’s-head bridegroom out of myth. Did you think that the planet would bend to your will? That you would control it? Oh, it is a lovely word: Overlord. Emperor. Pharaoh. Princeps. But you will be changed by it as by a virus. Mars will fill your empty, abandoned places. But the greatest of them understood their place. The overlord embraces the red planet, but in the end, Mars always triumphs. You will wake in your thousand year reign to discover your hair gone red, your translucent skin covered in dust, your three hearts suddenly fused into a molten, stony core. You will cease to want food, and seek out only cold, black air to drink. You will face the sun and turn, slowly, in circles, for days on end. Your thoughts will slow and become grand; you will see as a planet sees, speak as it speaks, which is to say: the long view, the perfected sentence.
And one morning you will wake up and your mouth will be covered over in stone, but the land beneath you, crimson as a promise, as a ruby, as an unrhymed couplet, as a virus—the land, or the machine, or the child, or the book, will speak with your voice, and you will be an overlord, and how proud we shall be of you, here, by the sea, listening to the dawn break over a new shore.
To Hie from Far Cilenia
Karl Schroeder
Karl Schroeder (www.kschroeder.com) lives in Toronto, Ontario, where he divides his time between writing fiction and consulting—chiefly in the area of Foresight Studies and technology. His work of forecasting fiction, Crisis in Zefra, was published by the Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts of the National Defense Canada in 2005. He began to publish stories in the 1990s, and he has, beginning with Ventus (2000), published seven science fiction novels and a collection of earlier stories. His most recent novel is The Sunless Countries (2009), the fourth adventure set in Virga, a far-future built-world hard-SF environment. After spending eighteen months recuperating from major surgery, he completed the final Virga novel, Ashes of Candesce, which is forthcoming in 2012.
To Hie from Far Cilenia has a complex publishing history typical of SF today, beginning with an original release in audio in 2009 as part of the John Scalzi anthology project, Metatropolis, later printed in a limited edition, and then in 2010 in a trade edition, where we found it. Using a plot device similar to that in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, he explores the moral ramifications of virtual worlds and disposable identities.
Sixteen plastic-wrapped, frozen reindeer made a forest of jutting legs and antlers in the back of the transport truck. Gennady Malianov raised his flashlight to peer down the length of the cargo container. He checked his Geiger counter, then said, “It’s them, all right.”
“You’re sure?” asked the Swedish cop. Hidden in his rain gear, he was all slick surfaces under the midnight drizzle. The mountain road stretching out behind him shone silver on black, dazzled here and there by the red and blue lights of a dozen emergency vehicles.
Gennady climbed down. “Officer, if you think there might be other trucks on this road loaded with radioactive reindeer, I think I need to know.”
The cop didn’t smile; his breath fogged the air. “It’s all about jurisdiction,” he said. “If they were just smuggling meat . . . but this is terrorism.”
“Still,” mused Gennady; the cop had been turning away but stopped. Gennady glanced back at the contorted, freezer-burned carcasses, and shrugged awkwardly. “I never thought I’d get to see them.”
“See who?”
Embarrassed now, Gennady nodded to the truck. “The famous Reindeer,” he said. “I never thought I’d get to see them.”
“Spöklik,” muttered the cop as he walked away. Gennady glanced in the truck once more, then walked toward his car, shoulders hunched. A little lig
ht on its dashboard was flashing, telling him he’d gone over the time he’d booked it for. Traffic on the E18 had proven heavier than expected, due to the rain and the fact that the police had shut down the whole road at Arjang. He was mentally subtracting the extra car-sharing fees from what they’d pay him for this very short adventure, when someone shouted, “Malianov?”
“What now?” He shielded his eyes with his hand. Two men were walking up the narrow shoulder from the emergency vehicles. Immediately behind them was a van without a flashing light—a big, black and sinister shape that reminded him of some of the paralegal police vans in Ukraine. The men had the burly look of plainclothes policemen.
“Are you Gennady Malianov?” asked the first, in English. Rain was beading on his bald skull. Gennady nodded.
“You’re with the IAEA?” the man went on. “You’re an arms inspector?”
“I’ve done that,” said Gennady neutrally.
“Lane Hitchens,” said the bald man, sticking out his beefy hand for Gennady to shake. “Interpol.”
“Is this about the reindeer?”
“What reindeer?” said Hitchens. Gennady snatched his hand back.
“This,” he said, waving at the checkpoint, the flashing lights, the bowed heads of the suspects in the back of the paddy wagon. “You’re not here about all this?”
Hitchens shook his head. “Look, I was just told you’d be here, so we came. We need to talk to you.”
Gennady didn’t move. “About what?”
“We need your help, damn it. Now come on!”
Some third person was opening the back of the big van. It still reminded Gennady of an abduction truck, but the prospect of work kept him walking. He needed the cash, even for an hour’s consultation at the side of a Swedish road.
Hitchens gestured for Gennady to climb into the van. “Reindeer?” he suddenly said with a grin.
“You ever heard of the Becqurel Reindeer?” said Gennady. “No? Well—very famous among us radiation hunters.”
The transport truck was pinioned in spotlights now as men in hazmat suits walked clumsily toward it. That was serious overkill, of course; Gennady grinned as he watched the spectacle.
“After Chernobyl a whole herd of Swedish reindeer got contaminated with cesium-137,” he said. “Fifty times the allowable dose. Tonnes of reindeer meat had already entered the processing plants before they realized. All those reindeer ended up in a meat locker outside Stockholm where they’ve been sitting ever since. Cooling off, you know?
“Well, yesterday somebody broke into the locker and stole some of the carcasses. I think the plan was to get the meat into shops somehow then cause a big scandal. A sort of dirty-bomb effect.”
The man with Hitchens swore. “That’s awful!”
Gennady laughed. “And stupid,” he said. “One look at what’s left and nobody in their right mind would buy it. But we caught them anyway, though you know the Norwegian border’s only a few kilometers that way . . .”
“And you tracked them down?” Hitchens sounded impressed. Gennady shrugged; he had something of a reputation as an adventurer these days, and it would be embarrassing to admit that he hadn’t been brought into this case because of his near-legendary exploits in Pripyat or Azerbaijan. No, the Swedes had tapped Gennady because, a couple of years ago, he’d spent some time in China shooting radioactive camels.
Casually, he said, “This is a paid consultation, right?”
Hitchens just nodded at the van again. Gennady sighed and climbed in.
At least it was dry in here. The back of the van had benches along its sides, a partition separating it from the cab, and a narrow table down its middle. A surveillance truck, then. A man and a woman were sitting on one bench, so Gennady slid in across from them. His stomach tightened with sudden anxiety; he forced himself to say “Hello.” Meeting anybody new, particularly in a professional capacity, always filled him with an awkward dread.
Hitchens and his companion heaved themselves in and slammed the van’s doors. Gennady felt somebody climb into the cab and heard its door shut.
“My car,” said Gennady.
Hitchens glanced at the other man. “Jack, could you clear Mr. Malianov’s account? We’ll get somebody to return it,” he said to Gennady. Then as the van began to move he turned to the other two passengers.
“This is Gennady Malianov,” he said to them. “He’s our nuclear expert.”
“Can you give me some idea what this is all about?” asked Gennady.
“Stolen plutonium,” said Hitchens blandly. “Twelve kilos. A bigger deal than your reindeer, huh?”
“Reindeer?” said the woman. Gennady smiled at her. She looked a bit out of place in here. She was in her mid-thirties, with heavy-framed glasses over her gray eyes and brown hair tightly clawed back on her skull. Her high-collared white blouse was fringed with lace. She looked like the clichéd schoolmarm.
Around her neck was hung a heavy-looking brass pocket watch.
“Gennady, this is Miranda Veen,” said Hitchens. Veen nodded. “And this,” continued Hitchens, “is Fraction.”
The man was wedged into one corner of the van. He glanced sidelong at Gennady, but seemed distracted by something else. He was considerably younger than Veen, maybe in his early twenties. He wore glasses similar to hers, but the lenses of his glowed faintly. With a start Gennady realized they were an augmented reality rig; they were miniature transparent computer screens, and some other scene was being overlaid on top of what he saw through them.
Veen’s were clear, which meant hers were probably turned off right now.
“Miranda’s our cultural anthropologist,” said Hitchens. “You’re going to be working with her more than the rest of us. She actually came to us a few weeks ago with a problem of her own—”
“And got no help at all,” said Veen, “until this other thing came up.”
“A possible connection with the plutonium,” said Hitchens, nodding significantly at Fraction. “Tell Gennady where you’re from,” he said to the young man.
Fraction nodded and suddenly smiled. “I hie,” he said, “from far Cilenia.”
Gennady squinted at him. His accent had sounded American. “Silesia?” asked Gennady. “Are you Czech?”
Miranda Veen shook her head. She was wearing little round earrings, he noticed. “Cilenia, not Silesia,” she said. “Cilenia’s also a woman’s name, but in this case it’s a place. A nation.”
Gennady frowned. “It is? Where is it?”
“That,” said Lane Hitchens, “is one of the things we want you to find out.”
The van headed east to Stockholm. All sorts of obvious questions occurred to Gennady, such as, “If you want to know where Cilenia is, why don’t you just ask Fraction, here?”—but Lane Hitchens seemed uninterested in answering them. “Miranda will explain,” was all he said.
Instead, Hitchens began to talk about the plutonium, which had apparently been stolen many years ago. “It kept being sold,” Hitchens said with an ironic grimace. “And so it kept being smuggled from one place to another. But after the Americans took their hit everybody started getting better and better detection devices on ports and borders. The plutonium was originally in four big slugs, but the buyers and sellers started dividing it up and moving the pieces separately. They kept selling it as one unit, which is the only reason we can still track it. But it got sliced into smaller and smaller chunks, staying just ahead of the detection technology of the day. We caught Fraction here moving one of them; but he’s just a mule, and has agreed to cooperate.
“Now there’s well over a hundred pieces, and a new buyer who wants to collect them all in one place. They’re on the move, but we can now detect a gram hidden in a tonne of lead. It’s gotten very difficult for the couriers.”
Gennady nodded, thinking about it. They only had to successfully track one of the packets, of course, to find the buyer. He glanced at Fraction again. The meaning of the man’s odd name was obvious now. “So, buyers are
from this mythical Cilenia?” he said.
Hitchens shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Then I ask again, why does Fraction here not tell us where that is, if he is so cooperative? Or, why have those American men who are not supposed to exist, not dragged him away to be questioned somewhere?”
Hitchens laughed drily. “That would not be so easy,” he said. “Fraction, could you lean forward a bit?” The young man obliged. “Turn your head?” asked Hitchens. Now Gennady could see the earbuds in Fraction’s ears.
“The man sitting across from you is a low-functioning autistic named Danail Gavrilov,” said Hitchens. “He doesn’t speak English. He is, however, extremely good at parroting what he hears, and somebody’s trained him to interpret a language of visual and aural cues so he can parrot gestures and motions, even complex ones.”
“Fraction,” said Fraction, “is not in this van.”
Gennady’s hackles rose. He found himself suddenly reluctant to look into the faintly glowing lenses of Danail Gavrilov’s glasses. “Cameras in the glasses,” he stammered, “of course, yes; and they’re miked . . . Can’t you trace the signal?” he asked Hitchens. The Interpol man shook his head.
Year’s Best SF 16 Page 23
