Obelisk

by Stephen Baxter

  Now the valley he was following narrowed suddenly, like a funnel. He couldn’t slow down in time, he was charging down its throat. And a slope rose up out of the dust under his left wheels, like a purpose-built ramp.

  The hurtling rover flipped neatly up and over. Suddenly he was sailing through the thin air, through the shifting shadows of this canyon, upside down. The flight seemed to take an age in the low gravity.

  Lemmy closed his eyes. The rat squealed. Yuri laughed out loud.

  The rover hit with a slam, and slid on its roof deeper into the canyon. Yuri, strapped upside down in his seat, was enough of a Martian by now to listen for the signs of a hull breach, the whistling of a leak, the ear-popping of decompression. But whoever had built this rover had done a good job, and the hull held.

  The rover rammed itself between narrowing walls, and came to a sudden, juddering halt.

  Yuri and Lemmy exchanged a look.

  ‘They’ll put us in the shit marsh for a year after this,’ Lemmy said, slightly strangulated, his harness around his neck.

  ‘It was worth it. Ten years would be worth it.’ Yuri reached to his waist, hit the release, and tumbled out of his seat and down into the inverted cabin roof. He reached up to help Lemmy down. The rat clung to Lemmy’s collar as if nothing had happened. ‘So now what?’

  ‘So now we wait for rescue, and to have our asses kicked by the Peacekeepers. I think there’s a coffee maker—’

  Yuri held up his hand. A distinctive scraping was coming from the hatch to the rear compartment. The sound of a handle turning, a wheel.

  Both of them turned and watched the hatch. Even the rat sat still.

  The hatch swung back, awkwardly pushed; whoever was back there was upside down too. Then a head and shoulders thrust through the hatch. The face was a tattooed mask, under a scalp shaven in elaborate whorls. A woman’s face. She had some kind of white dust scattered over her shoulders and the black jacket she wore. She was mad as hell. ‘Which of you two fuckers is the driver?’

  ‘I am.’

  The woman reached through the hatch with a clenched fist, every finger laden with a massive steel ring, and slammed a punch into Yuri’s nose.

  When he woke, his whole face felt like a bruise. He was lying on his back, over the steering wheel which dug into his spine, with his head resting on the windscreen. He touched his nose cautiously to find both nostrils bunged up by bits of ripped cloth.

  They were both looking at him.

  Lemmy was huddling in a corner of the cab, with a swelling over his right eye, either from the crash or from a second punch. ‘Sorry about the first aid, man. Your nose wouldn’t stop bleeding.’

  The woman sat in the open hatchway. She was chewing what looked like shreds of tobacco. The tattoos on her face were solid black slabs that brought out the glare of her pale blue eyes. He could see more of that white dust on her black tunic and charcoal-coloured leggings.

  Yuri struggled to sit up; his back ached like hell, and his face was a mass of throbbing pain. When he was settled on the inverted cabin roof, Lemmy handed him a plastic bulb of water that he sucked down gratefully. He said to Lemmy, ‘So we’ve not been saved yet.’

  Lemmy shrugged. ‘You’ve only been out about five minutes.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the woman. ‘Peacekeeper Tollemache is on his way.’

  ‘Why him? How do you know?’ But the woman just glared back at him, and he filled in the blanks: because Tollemache already knew about whatever she was up to, in the back of this anonymous rover. That was Peacekeepers for you, always in somebody’s pocket.

  She said, ‘Give me more of that water, you little prick.’ Lemmy scrambled to comply. ‘My name is Delga. And you owe me money.’ She glanced down at the powder spilled on her tunic.

  Yuri had no intention of paying anything, come what may. ‘How much?’

  ‘I’ll let you know. I’ll want it in UN dollars, by the way, not the local scrip.’

  ‘And how much for Peacekeeper Tollemache?’

  That might have earned him another punch. Instead she just grinned. Her front teeth were filed to points. ‘The Peacekeepers know I provide a necessary service.’

  ‘Drugs.’

  ‘I offer escape from this place. What were you doing in this rover but escaping?’

  ‘You’re a regular social worker.’

  She frowned. ‘A what? I know who you are. You’re a curiosity. The ice boy, right? Your name is Yuri. What the hell kind of a name is that?’

  ‘Not my name.’

  ‘Then why are you called it?’

  ‘Some joker called me that when they woke me up, here on Mars.’

  ‘So what’s your real name?’

  He looked away.

  There was movement outside. Somebody in a pressure suit, the helmet UN blue, shone a flashlight through the cabin window. Then there was more movement, vehicle lights, a big bundle being offloaded from a rover.

  ‘They’ll put a dome up around us,’ Lemmy said. ‘Get us out that way. It’s a whole squad of Peacekeepers, out here because of us. Look at how they’re moving. See, that jerky way? They’ve got military enhancements. Oh, boy, are we in trouble.’

  While they waited, Delga was still staring at Yuri, faintly curious. He wondered how old she was – mid-thirties, maybe. Under the tattoos it was hard to tell. She said, ‘This is Mars, ice boy. It’s the dream of a thousand years to be here. I bet that’s how they talked in your day, right?’

  ‘Not me. It’s not my dream. Who would raise a kid in a place like this? Like in a prison, or a cage.’

  ‘They want us to have kids,’ Lemmy said. ‘Kids are the future, on Mars. You get breaks if you have ’em. But there are a lot of stillborn, and births that don’t go right. Kids that don’t grow right.’ He whirled a finger by his ear. ‘You know.’

  ‘They have a Public School, they call it,’ said Delga, ‘in Phlegra Montes. That’s in the northern hemisphere, a long way from here. That’s where they dump all those kids. The UN runs the Phlegra camp in cooperation with the Chinese. Think of that, the great rivals cooperating to cover up what becomes of their kids.’

  ‘Cover up? From who?’

  ‘From the folks on Earth. The voters, whoever props up the UN. Mars is a dream of the frontier. You can’t have some blank-eyed broken kid spoiling the image, can you? So it’s all hidden away.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  She shrugged.

  But Lemmy said now, ‘Because she has a kid of her own there. Don’t you, Delga?’

  She didn’t take her eyes off Yuri. ‘We all have secrets. Except for you, boy cosmonaut. You don’t have secrets; you’re just a blank.’

  At last the hatch opened, with a hiss of equalising air pressure. A man, hefty, thrust his head and shoulders into the inverted cabin. He wore a pressure suit, military specification, but he had his helmet off. He looked maybe forty years old. Behind him Yuri could see the translucent walls of a temporary bubble-dome, heard the clatter of a portable air supply system. The guy glared around the cabin at the three of them. ‘Who’s responsible for this?’

  Delga smiled easily. ‘Good morning, Peacekeeper Tollemache. Not me. I was asleep in the back, after my last shift. You can check the records. I only woke up when—’

  ‘It was me,’ Yuri said. ‘My idea. My plan, my driving. I made Lemmy here show me how.’

  ‘Sure you did.’ Tollemache inspected the bits of cloth stuck in Yuri’s nose. ‘Disgusting.’ He leaned into the cabin and loomed over Yuri. Smiling, spacesuited, he suddenly reminded Yuri of the astronaut in the ‘Far Centaurus’ poster. ‘You’re the ice boy, right? Nothing but a pain in the butt since they defrosted you. Well, you won’t be my problem much longer.’ With a gloved fist he jammed a needle into Yuri’s neck.

  Once again the red-brown Martian light folded
away.

  OTHER YESTERDAYS

  THE JUBILEE PLOT

  Murmurs ran through the crowd. ‘She is coming! The Queen is coming!’ ‘Listen – you can hear the whistle of her Trevi!’ Under the high sun of this June morning, top hats were raised and lacy parasols twirled.

  Giles Romillie was as thrilled as the rest at the sound of the steam whistle. Above all he dreamed of the race across the Channel bridge at six that evening, after which he himself was to be presented to Her Majesty – if he won! And somewhere in the crowd around him was Edith Wilcox, and he imagined her warm gaze on him when he returned from the French side and raised the trophy in victory.

  It was 20 June 1887, the day of Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Later Giles would remember these heady morning moments and marvel at how little he had anticipated of the hours to come, when, as the Jubilee Plot unfolded, at peril would not be racing glory or the love of a serving girl, but his very life – and the life of a Queen-Empress.

  His immediate problem was that he couldn’t see what was going on. Lost in a forest of tall men wearing shiny black morning suits and women in elaborate gowns and bonnets, he could see nothing but Kentish sky. Giles, twenty years old, already dressed in his bright scarlet racing leathers, was stocky and strong, but tall he was not. He had to witness the Queen’s arrival. He cast about, looking for inspiration.

  He was a hundred paces away from a raised bandstand that stood on the bridge slip road. That might do.

  With muttered apologies he pushed his way through the crowd. He knew most of these people, by sight if not by name; his father’s class, the land-owning aristocracy, was powerful and supremely wealthy but not numerous, and everybody knew everybody else. He was rewarded with irritated glances from the loftily pompous – and, in his tight-fitting leathers, frankly lustful looks from some of the ladies, and one or two men.

  He reached the bandstand. Its delicate wrought-iron roof was supported by slim pillars. In its shade, players of a Grenadier Guards band were sorting out their music and brass instruments. They ignored Giles. He stepped onto the stage, but it was only eighteen inches off the ground and he could see little more than he had before.

  A trombone player, a big man wearing campaign ribbons from the Ottoman War of a decade before, took pity on him. ‘Looking for a view, sonny? Why don’t you follow the other lad’s example and go up top?’ He indicated the iron roof.

  ‘What other lad?’ But the man had already turned away. So Giles, relishing a bit of adventure, set his peaked cap back on his head and scaled a pillar’s ornate ironwork. His thin-soled boots slipped on glossy white paint.

  A hand in a black leather glove reached down. ‘Let me help you.’

  Giles looked up at a handsome, grinning face, a shock of blond hair silhouetted against the sky. ‘Ulrich,’ he growled. ‘It would be you.’

  Ulrich Zuba laughed. ‘You may as well get used to me finishing first today!’

  Giles grudgingly took the offered glove, and let Ulrich haul him up to the roof. So they sat side by side, Giles in his red racing leathers, Ulrich Zuba, Giles’s deadliest rival, in his black.

  At least the view, over a sea of top hats and parasols, was as magnificent as Giles had hoped.

  He was only a hundred yards from the mighty abutment of the Jubilee Bridge, whose iron roots had been planted firmly into this chalky coastal ground a few miles from Folkestone. The bridge was a cantilever design, with iron trunks striding away towards France, supporting dual-level trackways inside shaped boxes of girders. It was hard to grasp the scale of the structure until you remembered that the lower track bore a four-track rail line, a route for the continental railway companies to reach the British Isles, and the upper, a route for autocars, was as wide and true a road as anything the Romans had ever built. A vision of Sir Benjamin Baker, architect of the Forth Bridge, the whole was painted post-box red, vivid against the blue of the sea. Tall ships passed under its mighty spans.

  And it was across that upper roadway that, later that day, Ulrich and Giles would be racing for the honour of being the first ever to cross the freshly opened bridge.

  Away from the bridge, a broad new Telford road ran straight as an arrow off to the north to join the main south coast route, and this the national network. Meanwhile the rail link rather petered out, ending only in the rusty old military line to London. One short troop train stood idle on the tracks, its carriages black with soot. Closer by, a select crowd milled around the bandstand, looking from Giles’ vantage like a flock of exotic birds. A pavilion sheltered the most notable, including several foreign heads of state, and there were distractions for the rest, including a fair and a display of country dancing.

  But most eyes were turned north, where a short road train was approaching. As its mighty ten-feet-diameter wheels turned steadily, the Trevi’s whistle blasted again, a puff of steam rising like a flag, and the onlookers cheered. Giles strained to glimpse the little woman who must be riding within one of those ornate carriages, in her black widow’s weeds. She had been on the throne of Britain since the death of her father fifty years ago today. Beside her should be her son, Edward Prince of Wales, the heir to the throne to whom would fall the honour of starting the race, as well as hammering home the bridge’s last rivet, of solid gold.

  ‘It is good news for you, Giles,’ Ulrich said in his slightly laboured English, and he pointed. ‘Look, the Queen herself drives your autocar to the starting line!’

  ‘Oh, very witty. I’ll have you know that famous old omnibus drew her carriage to her coronation. One of Gurney’s designs, I believe, deriving from Trevithick’s prototypes. The Queen cleaves to tradition. That is her role.’

  ‘She chose not to risk her royal neck in a put-put coal-gas autocar like your Boulton. Very wise! Perhaps she has merely been waiting to purchase a sound petrol-driven design like my Daimler.’

  ‘If so, she might change her mind after she sees you lost in my dust this evening.’

  ‘We will see.’ Ulrich glanced around. ‘Chancellor Bismarck is intending to be here in time to witness my triumph. He will be travelling, in fact, on the very first railway train to arrive from the continent over the bridge.’

  ‘Trains. Pah! The rail carriageway spoils the line of the bridge, if you ask me. They should have left it as a dual-level roadway.’

  Ulrich raised plucked eyebrows. ‘But without the money from the continental iron-road companies, who are impatient to get at your ore and coal, the bridge would never have been built in the first place. Surely you know that. Do you read the newspapers, Herr Romillie?’

  Actually Giles rarely did, save for the reports on motors and racing – and in particular on himself.

  Ulrich laughed again. ‘I will not tease you further. Look.’ He pointed. ‘A young lady is waving to you.’

  Giles’s heart beat faster.

  She was a slight girl, her complexion olive, her jet black hair set off well against the cream-coloured gown she wore. She grinned up at Giles, and mouthed, ‘I’ve been looking for you!’

  ‘You have found me!’ he mouthed back.

  ‘You lucky dog,’ Ulrich said.

  ‘She is called Edith.’

  Edith Wilcox worked in the royal household. Giles had met her when his father took him to Hampton Court to discuss protocol surrounding the race events. Today Edith’s duties would start when the patient Trevi brought the Queen to the royal pavilion.

  ‘Such a pretty girl,’ Ulrich said. ‘But such poor taste in men! And forward too, if I may say so. She has an exotic look about her – Mediterranean, is she?’

  ‘Actually she’s from London – Euston. Her father is Irish, her mother black, a freed slave.’

  Again Ulrich raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, she’s a beauty for all that. But she’s hardly a marriage prospect, is she? Not for a scion of such a family as yours.’

  The very question
surprised Giles. ‘Of course not.’ Yet his own quick answer rather shamed him.

  ‘That’s the attitude,’ came a growling voice from the ground. Sir Joshua Romillie spoke around a fat cigar, his face as red as Giles’s racing jacket.

  ‘Good morning, Father.’

  Ulrich tipped his peaked cap. ‘Sir Joshua.’

  Sir Joshua grunted. ‘Should have known I’d find you up there, Giles. Can’t resist making a spectacle of yourself, can you? Like a ruddy peacock in those leathers.’

  Ulrich defended him. ‘I rather think more eyes are drawn to Her Majesty this morning, Sir Joshua. Or else to the loveliness of Edith Wilcox.’

  ‘Who? Oh, Giles’s latest flibbertigibbet. Well, I was young once. Any engine must be run in. Just so long as you don’t wear out your piston, eh, boy?’

  Giles, blushing, glanced at Edith’s sweet face. She was whispering to her friend, another palace servant, a flame-haired Irish beauty called Gemma whom he had met once or twice. Perhaps they were talking about him. Edith winked at him boldly. He felt his heart soften, just a little.

  But he said, ‘Of course not, sir.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake get down from there, you pair.’

  They made their way to pillars and clambered down from the roof.

  Ulrich asked, ‘And what do you think of the bridge, Sir Joshua?’

  He frowned, an intimidating expression exaggerated by his dense grey sideburns. ‘I heard you taunting the boy over the rail deck. I’d have nothing to do with railways if it was my choice. Shunting the poor around the country might be good enough for you continentals, but it’s not the English way, and never has been. The English yeoman lives on the ground his ancestors have tilled since before the Conquest, and he’s best left there. My own father opposed George Stephenson himself …’