Pale Mars

by Garnett Elliott

  "I gave her ten milligrams of hypnotic," Yegor explained. "Once she calmed down she started talking about the archeological expedition."

  "Any mention of the Last Martian?"

  "Several times. I told her to keep it quiet as a matter of national security. She seems to think her upyr and the Martian are one and the same."

  "I'm beginning to agree. I found an air-duct stuffed with several of the colonists' remains. It looked like something had tried to digest them, and then hid the bodies."

  Yegor took off his glasses to blink. "You mean … what happened here, it wasn't some kind of political uprising?"

  "I don't think so. But we don't have all the information, yet."

  She went over to the mattress where Azarova reclined. The archeologist had a vacant smile on her face, though her eyes seemed clearer than before. Nadezhda said: "Doctor, it's vital you tell me about the expedition. Weeks ago, you sent out a message your team may have found evidence of a surviving Martian."

  Azarova's smile turned sly. "I can't take the credit for myself. That honor belongs to Dr. Whitcombe, may God rest her soul."

  "What did you find?"

  "A chamber, beneath the cairn towers." She swallowed. "But kapitan, this is a scientific matter, not a military one."

  "Tell me, Azarova."

  "It hurts even to think about it. The MGB taught me how to resist indoctrination, but my mind, I've discovered, isn't as strong as I thought."

  "I'll have Yegor give you all the sedatives you want. Just spit it out."

  She curled herself around her knees, as if she'd start rocking again. "There was a chamber in the tomb-complex. Well, more like an antechamber. Whitcombe couldn't figure out how to open it all the way. But she opened it enough, because some kind of presence was released. We all sensed it. Shortly afterwards, Dr. Nakos disappeared. Then Krause. Poor Whitcombe lost her mind. I still had strength enough to send the message, before I escaped the site. It must've followed me here. Days after I arrived the explosions started, and colonists began disappearing."

  "Did you ever see it?"

  "Just shadows, or movement out the corner of my eye. We were so careful, I don't know how it could've snuck up on us like it did. That's when I remembered the stories my mother used to tell me. She was Romanian, and given to fanciful legends about upyr, hostile spirits …"

  "Doctor, listen to me. Is it possible Whitcombe might still be alive? Or others with the expedition?"

  She grimaced. "It's possible. We had provisions, and a pressurized tent. But they'd be—anyone left would be hopelessly insane, by now."

  "Can you show me how to get to the site?"

  "I'm never going back there. Never."

  "Draw me a map, at least. Something I could follow from the air."

  "If you value your sanity …"

  "Venus has already claimed that, doctor. Just give me a map."

  * * *

  Ramos wasn't pleased at the prospect of a late afternoon outing. "The cairn towers? They're an hour away, by crawler, and those were all destroyed." "I have something faster at my disposal," Nadezhda said.

  "A waste of time. Shouldn't we be getting ready to evacuate people?"

  "There might still be survivors from the archeological expedition. I'd like to at least try to locate them, with your help."

  Ramos glanced over to where Jimmy sat in the coffee shop, perched atop a bright orange stool. He rubbed his forehead. "It'll be evening soon. The temperature really drops at night. And the visibility …"

  "Time is vital. Any survivors might not be able to wait until morning."

  "You'll leave your man here, on guard?"

  "Yegor will remain as before. If anything gets through those doors, he'll blast it."

  "Ah, well. I suspect I was out there, freezing in the ruins, I'd be hoping someone might come rescue me."

  "Does that mean you'll go?"

  He looked at Jimmy again. "I'll go."

  Nadezhda put in a call to the Volga, once they'd exited the hotel.

  "Kapitan," Gennady said, sounding tired. "You sending Yegor to relieve me? I'm getting bored, cooped up in here."

  "You won't be bored much longer. Prep for dust-off."

  * * *

  Ramos gawked at sight of the needle-nosed lander. He seemed even more impressed, once they were inside the Volga's cockpit. "Goddamn," he said, eyeballing the instrument panel. "I'd heard you guys were a couple years ahead of us, but I had no idea …"

  Nadezhda unfolded Azarova's map, hastily scrawled on Howard Johnson's stationary. She tucked it above the altimeter. "Mr. Ramos, meet my engineer, Gennady Nureyev. Gennady, this is Ray Ramos, leader of the colony survivors."

  Formalities over with, she routed power to the retro rockets. The Volga ascended on a curtain of flame. Thirty meters up she aligned the boat's nose with the distant towers. At one-quarter thrust on the throttles, Martian terrain slid away beneath.

  "I was wondering about those things," Gennady said, peering at the spindly fingers of stone. "I guess the storm must've been covering them when we landed."

  "You're about to get a much closer view." Nadezhda apprised her crewmate of everything that had happened, omitting any reference to the Last Martian. She could reveal that part in private, on the odd chance Ramos understood Russian.

  A narrow ribbon appeared in the plains below. "That's the trail the crawlers take, hauling tourists," Ramos said. "It gets more scenic closer to the ruins."

  Minutes later the featureless plain gave way to a series of shallow vales, filled with ochre-colored moss. What looked like squat, calcified trees began to dot the landscape. It was the most life Nadezhda had seen so far on this moribund planet. But the novelty of Martian flora couldn't compete with the cairn towers, now looming close. Black basalt, striped with dull red deposits, reached for hundreds of meters into the air. The rock spires tapered to thin points, further giving the impression of a giant hand groping from the soil.

  "Earthquakes should've knocked those down long ago," she said, frowning. "Even in lower gravity they look too delicate to stand."

  Ramos shrugged. "Martian ingenuity."

  The Volga banked, shuddering with deceleration as Nadezhda hit the air-flaps and eased off on the throttle. She checked Azarova's map against visible landmarks. At fifteen meters up retros fired again. The Volga's forward momentum ceased and she wobbled her way down on vectored thrust. A forest of the bone-white trees surrounded the towers; their canopies were mushroom-shaped, and covered with a variegated surface like brain coral. Nadezhda set down in a small clearing.

  They secured respirators and climbed out into bracing air.

  The cairn towers seemed to cast kilometer-long shadows. Nadezhda rechecked her map, then conferred with Ramos about the best approach to the site. As they spoke, a cry cut through the thin air.

  "That was close," she said, looking up from her map.

  Gennady pointed at the tree line. "From there, I think."

  The cry became a plaintive shout. Someone cursing. Nadezhda tucked the map into a vacc suit pocket and sprinted towards the trees, drawing her Topchev as she ran. White foliage grew dense overhead.

  She nearly tripped over the corpse of a young man lying on his back. Sightless eyes stared up from a pale face, contorted in pain. A half-dozen scarlet beetles, big as her hand, perched atop his chest and neck, their chelae sunk deep into flesh. The insects were gorging themselves like monstrous ticks, abdomens pulsing and swelling with blood.

  Scant meters away a swarm of the things had surrounded a mushroom tree. They scrabbled up the trunk, converging on an old woman who'd managed to wedge herself against a high branch. She was shouting through her respirator, swatting frantically with a metal pole. Pulped beetles slicked the tree's bark as they slid back down.

  Nadezhda spent precious seconds adjusting the settings on her Topchev. When she sighted and fired, a wall of crimson erupted instead of a narrow beam. Beetles crisped. She played the swath of atomic flame up and down
the trunk, careful to keep it from touching the woman's feet.

  "Watch your flank!" Ramos appeared beside her. He leveled the shard-thrower at a column of beetles marching in from the left. A sharp cough, and crystalline shrapnel tore through their ranks. More came scurrying over and around the fallen.

  Nadezhda swiveled to fire again, but not before Gennady's weapon flashed. A second river of molten particles fell over the insects, blackening chitin until it burst.

  Barrels swept the clearing. The trunk of the mushroom tree had caught fire, but only for a moment before sputtering out in oxygen-thin atmosphere. No new waves of beetles appeared. Nadezhda approached the tree and extended her hand to the old woman staring down in mute surprise. Strands of gray-white hair poked out from beneath her respirator's straps. She had a round, wrinkled face with a weak chin, and eyes as empty as her dead colleague's.

  "Dr. Whitcombe, I presume," Nadezhda said.

  The old woman pointed one end of the pole at her like a spear. When she spoke, a precise Oxford accent rattled through her mask. "You have me at a disadvantage, madam."

  Nadezhda made introductions. Whitcombe threw the pole aside and accepted a hand down. When she saw the prone body of the young man she shook her head. "Poor, poor Paul. I told him to always keep a weapon close at hand."

  "He was a member of your team?" Nadezhda said.

  "Geologist. A fine one." She peered at the bloated insects still feeding on the corpse. "Would you mind? I happen to know Paul was a good Protestant, and would've preferred cremation."

  "Step back." Nadezhda lowered her pistol. A few passes of the widened beam, and Paul's ashes drifted away on the Martian wind.

  "Amen. Well, pleasure to make your acquaintances, but I've got work to do …" Whitcombe retrieved her pole and started off through the trees.

  "Wait a minute," Ramos said. "We came here to rescue you."

  She didn't turn around. "You're from Chrysetown, yes? Then you're all good as dead. I'd just as soon meet my end out here."

  Nadezhda reached forward and took her by the elbow, gently. "Dr. Azarova's safe with us."

  "Azarova? She made it back to the domes? Must've walked the whole way. She's hopelessly mad, you know."

  Gennady snorted. "It seems to be catching."

  "Tell me what happened here," Nadezhda said, ignoring him.

  "Well, Paul and I set out to get firewood, and came across a hive of sippee beetles. They must've hatched recently, because we hadn't seen—"

  "I mean the expedition. Dr. Azarova said you'd found something, an antechamber, just before people started disappearing."

  "Oh, that." Her face seemed to shut in on itself, closing up with the memory.

  "Doctor …"

  "I'd really rather not talk about it, thank you." She dislodged Nadezhda's hand and started off again.

  "Pure crazy," Ramos said. "Let's just hog-tie her and drag her back to the domes."

  Nadezhda shook her head. "She knows what happened. Or an important part of it, at least. We'll follow."

  Whitcombe was using her pole like a walking stick, ambling along a faint trail. The base of one of the basalt towers darkened the foliage to her left. She made for it, not pausing to look behind her. After a hundred meters the trees played out and the trail ended at the lip of a crater-like depression, big enough for one of the colony's domes to fit over top. The black towers ringed this natural basin, jutting up around it like the tines on a crown.

  "The tomb complex," Ramos explained.

  Whitcombe was already descending a stone ramp, carved into the side of the depression. Nadezhda followed, cautious; the ramp's surface had been worn glass-smooth, perhaps by countless generations of Martian feet. But aluminum guide-rails had been thoughtfully bolted to the wall, and she made use of them.

  Wind whistled over the top of the basin. The steep sides must've protected from storms, because at the bottom she could see the detritus of casual visitors—cigarette butts, beer bottles, candy wrappers—lying in little shoals. Even on an oxygen-thin world people would forego their respirators long enough to indulge.

  Whitcombe reached the basin floor and made straight for a series of cave mouths riddling the rock wall. Nadezhda recalled the scratchings on Azarova's map. She'd put an 'X' above the leftmost cave, where Whitcombe was headed now. It showed signs of recent excavation, with piles of fresh rubble off to one side. Closer, and Nadezhda saw the cleared-away mouth formed a perfect ellipse. Not natural at all.

  "Kapitan …" Gennady said, his voice uneasy.

  "Let me guess. You're getting a bad feeling about this place."

  "I thought I should point it out."

  Whitcombe disappeared inside. Nadezhda stepped past the rubble, noticing the 'cave' was actually a tunnel, with the firefly glow of radium lamps strung along one wall. Greenish-white lights formed a straight line receding into darkness. The walls, floor, and ceiling had been carved with parallel ridges, giving the impression of standing inside an intestinal tract.

  "Alright," Nadezhda admitted. "I don't like it either."

  Forty meters back the tunnel widened into a hexagonal chamber of red-flecked stone. Vertical niches held what appeared to be sarcophagi, though they were too tall for human bodies. Crabbed Martian hieroglyphs covered every available surface; spirals, ellipsoids, cross-hatches, cuneiform wedges, shapes that looked like the mouthparts of insects … a collection to give any semanticist nightmares. Whatever knowledge the Martian race had accumulated remained locked away in those symbols.

  A pressure tent had been set up in the chamber's center, next to a narrow, six-wheeled sand crawler someone had managed to drive through the tunnel. The crawler's hood was torn off, exposing ragged wires draped over the side like spilled guts.

  Whitcombe, still ignoring them, was in the process of loosening the flaps to the tent's airlock. Nadezhda began to call out to her, but stopped when she saw the figure against the far wall.

  A Martian stared back.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The creature was part bas-relief and part mosaic, a combination she'd never seen before, rendered in chips of obsidian, copper, and lapis. Humanoid, it stood just under three meters. Long, slender limbs hung along a torso that belled out to a pigeon chest. The large earflaps were said to be articulated, allowing them to fold over the slit-like eyes during storms. Based on artifacts recovered and numerous fortifications found, the Martians were posited as a warrior race—but the six-fingered hands of this figure, extended in complex, mudra-like gestures, were weaponless. Nadezhda stood transfixed. Her mind only half-registered Whitcombe, who had noticed her at last and come shuffling over.

  "They evolved from worms, you know. Not primates."

  "Excuse me?"

  "The Martians." Whitcombe pointed at the bas relief. "Two arms, legs, the same approximate sensory organs—and they don't even have a skeleton. Hydrostatic suspension handles that, with a stiff layer of cartilage analogous to chitin. But I'm no biologist. Comparative ethnography, that's my game."

  "Ah, doctor, I hope we're not intruding—"

  "Oh my, no. I was just about to drink a toast to Paul. Why don't you come inside and join me?" She turned to Ramos and Gennady, making an encompassing gesture with her arms. "You as well, of course."

  "What killed them off?" Nadezhda said. "The Martians, I mean."

  "Well, there're several theories, but …" Her eyes grew crafty. "I could show you. The answers are right here, beneath our feet."

  "Please do."

  "A drink, first. That's what Paul would've wanted, I'm sure. The poor boy."

  She stooped to lead them through the tent's crude airlock. The bubble-space inside was big enough for six people, now mostly empty except for supply crates. Two bedrolls had been set up beside a fire pit, crackling with white coals. As an experienced cosmonaut, the mixing of 'open flame' with 'pressurized environment' made Nadezhda wince, though the tent's interior wouldn't have the same oxygen concentration as a spacecraft.

  "The
fire saves power," Whitcombe said, noting her discomfort. She slipped her respirator off. "I need every spare erg to keep the compressor pumping."

  Ramos stretched his hands out to the fire. "You and Paul were the only survivors here?"

  "Besides Azarova, apparently, yes."

  "Someone did a number on your crawler. Wanted to keep you here, it looks like."

  "I never intended to leave. Not before, and not now." Whitcombe retrieved a strangely-shaped object from behind a crate. It looked like a small Greek amphora, capped at the top with a knot of dried clay. "This place is the discovery of a lifetime. Azarova, with her pathetic arches on Callisto. Ha! What I've found here dwarfs all that."

  She laid out several coffee cups, then broke off the clay stopper and carefully poured a measure of red liquid into each. "Martian wine. Fermented from lily-fruits a thousand kilometers distant, in the hidden springs of the lowlands. By most reckoning it should be vinegar by now. Try some."

  Nadezhda deferred, but Gennady and Ramos snatched up cups.

  "Not bad," Ramos said, after a sip. "Kind of dry. You could sell this stuff for a fortune."

  "It's less than a hundred years old," Whitcombe said.

  Nadezhda took a cup and sniffed at it; acrid, but not spoiled. "A hundred?"

  "That's right. There were extant Martians less than a century ago." Whitcombe gestured at the shard-thrower hanging from Ramos's belt. "Why do you think those artifacts still work? They'd be pitted and useless if the culture was as old as people think."

  Nadezhda set her cup down. "You mean …"

  "They didn't 'die out slowly' per the popular theory. There weren't that many left, but something killed them. A mass-extinction event, and I believe it happened right here." She tapped her foot against the floor.

  Nadezhda reconsidered the wine. Maybe a drink wasn't a bad idea. She looked sidelong at Gennady and Ramos; both men were studiously examining their cups.

  Whitcombe stood up. "You don't believe me, do you? Think I've gone 'round the bend, is that it? Well, you wanted to see. Just remember that: you asked me to show you."