The Emperor of Mars

by Patrick Samphire

  “Is this your friend?” Rackham said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  I should have recognized him. We’d spent a week together on Captain Kol’s boat, and Gal had often stopped by to tell us stories of Ancient Mars, but it was dark in the cell, his face was bruised, and I just wasn’t sure.

  “Of course it is,” Putty said.

  At the sound of her voice, the man looked up.

  “We’ve been searching for you everywhere,” Putty said. “Edward said he’d find you, but I was the one who figured it all out first.” She shot me a dirty glance.

  “We need to get out of here,” Rackham said. “Can you walk?”

  Rothan Gal nodded. “I believe so. With help.”

  Rackham put an arm under his shoulder and lifted the bigger man up. “We need to get you to an airship. Someone can go back with you while the rest stop Blood.” He turned to Papa. “Mr. Sullivan…”

  Rothan Gal shook his head. “No. I must help. This is important to my people. This thing he attempts, it is something we have sworn to prevent.”

  “Then let’s all get going,” I said. “Before we’re discovered.”

  We made a pathetic sight as we limped our way along the hallways, following Mina. Papa still looked dazed, and I suspected I didn’t look much better. My feet were covered in blisters from the hike across the desert, and I ached all over. Dr. Blood’s men hadn’t been gentle when they’d captured us. I’d been thrown to the floor and one of the armored men—a big man the others called Flood—had knelt on my back. I’d thought my spine might crack. Rackham was almost having to carry Rothan Gal, and the native Martian was heavier than he looked.

  Only Putty seemed to have any energy. She darted back and forth impatiently, her hands twitching as though she were preparing to snatch her egg back from Dr. Blood.

  At last, the hallway we were walking down changed. The plain steel walls became more elaborate, with carved pillars holding up the ever-rising ceiling, and ornate doors inset with gold and silver. Up ahead, a heavy door was decorated like the Ancient Martian temples, with twisting, slipping figures of dragons and men and strange beasts. The widely spaced gas lamps that lit much of the interior of the platform had been replaced by photon emission devices set into the ceiling.

  “This is where Father … It’s his…” Mina said.

  “It’s his palace,” I said. “He’s built himself a palace.”

  “Yeah,” she said. She nodded toward the great door. “We can’t go through there. It leads to the entrance hall. There’ll be guards. Lots of them. He doesn’t trust them enough to let them into the main hall beyond, but they’re outside.” She produced a key and opened a small door in one wall. “In here. I stole the key from Father. In case.”

  It was dark inside. But in the light coming from the hallway, I saw a narrow metal staircase leading up into the blackness. It looked old and rusty. It must have been something left over from the platform’s original use. There were even traces of the fine pollen I’d seen when we’d been captured by Dr. Blood’s gulper.

  “The palace is built where the gulpers used to come in to land,” Mina whispered. “Nicholas showed me the original plans. This staircase used to go up to where the controllers sat to guide in the gulpers.”

  “So where does it go now?” I said.

  “Above the main hall. There’s a balcony. No one goes up there, except for maintenance or cleaning. We’ll be able to look down and see what’s happening.”

  The narrow, steep stairs ended in a small door. It was locked, but Mina scarcely took a minute to pick it. We came out on a long balcony under the enormous glass dome. In the day, sunlight must have poured in through the glass, but at night the blazing light from the hall below turned the glass as black as oil.

  “We’re about thirty feet above the hall,” Mina whispered.

  I nodded and slowly lifted my head above the parapet to take a look.

  The hall was two hundred feet long. At the far end, a dais so large it looked like a small pyramid rose almost as high as the balcony, and on top there was an enormous seat.

  “This isn’t a hall,” I said. “It’s a throne room.”

  Control panels covered in dials and switches surrounded the throne. Above the throne, levered arms held a selection of lenses and small mechanical devices.

  Pillars ran the length of the throne room, reaching up to the glass dome. They were carved with twisted shapes that seemed to evade the eye. At one moment I thought I was seeing a dragon curled around the pillar, the next a convoy of boats on a river, the next a thousand men kneeling before a temple. I couldn’t focus on any part of the carvings for long enough to tell exactly what they were.

  Behind the pillars, gigantic banks of machinery—glass tubes larger than a man, bronze wheels, giant cogs, wires, metal cabinets, and enormous steel tanks—ran the length of both walls and along the back wall behind the dais. In front of the machinery stood lines of unmoving automatic servants, but every single one of them had had their left hands and forearms replaced with long blades. Other unfathomable contraptions hung below the ceiling on chains that stretched across the hall.

  In front of the dais, on a workbench, was the stone sarcophagus Apprentice had stolen from the Museum of Martian Antiquities. Dr. Blood and Apprentice were working over it. Dozens of rubber tubes snaked across the floor to end six inches above the sarcophagus. Optical cables trailed from photon emission devices, and each illuminated the sarcophagus in different-colored light. Levers and mechanical arms stretched in from every direction. It looked like a dozen giant metal spiders were all reaching toward the sarcophagus.

  “That’s my egg!” Putty hissed.

  It was nestled in the middle of the sarcophagus, almost hidden by everything around it.

  “What’s all the machinery?” I asked.

  Mina shrugged. “Not my field. Nicholas is the one who understands machines, not me.”

  Papa squinted through his dirty eyeglasses at the banks of machinery that lined the walls. “I saw something similar before at the University of Tharsis when Archibald and I were students. It was used as a means of storing electrostatic energy and discharging it quickly. But it was no more than a curiosity. It was far easier to generate the energy when we needed it than to store it.”

  “So what does he want it for?” I said.

  “Ah.” Papa rubbed his eyeglasses on his jacket. “The device at Tharsis University was no larger than a plate. If Archibald has succeeded in scaling it up, the energy it contains could be catastrophic. Release it in one place, and it could rip apart a city.”

  “Use a weapon like that once and no one will dare stand against you again,” Rackham said. “He means to make an example of someone.”

  “We cannot allow it,” Rothan Gal said. The native Martian was still weak, and he had only taken a peek over the edge of the balcony before slumping back, but he was more alert than he’d been when we’d pulled him out of his cell. “The Martian emperors must never return.” He coughed, muffling it with his elbow. I glanced back at the throne room below, but Blood and Apprentice didn’t seem to have noticed. They were still working at the sarcophagus.

  “They were a scourge on the land,” Rothan Gal said. “With their great machines, they were too powerful. No one could resist them. They enslaved the people and ruled over them for thousands of years. We have only fragments of knowledge from the time of the emperors, but it is enough. Native Martians—most of us, anyway—swore long ago never to let the emperors rise again. Why do you think we have never made use of the technology hidden in the dragon tombs? Why do you think we never opened those tombs ourselves?”

  “I thought—” I started.

  “You thought we were incapable,” Gal said. He raised a hand before I could protest. “You are not alone. We are primitives, your people think. Yet who built the devices that you have based your own inventions on? We were not incapable. We were unwilling. We would not take the risk. We have s
een what happens when too much power is granted to men. Never again. That is why your Dr. Blood cannot be allowed to succeed.”

  “How do we stop him?” I said. “We haven’t got any weapons, and I don’t like the look of those automatic servants.”

  “I think I have an idea,” Papa said. “But first we must get down there and get close.”

  “There are armed men outside the hall doors,” Mina said. “We’ll never get past them.”

  “And if we try to climb down, we’ll be spotted,” I said. I shook my head. “I don’t see how we’re going to manage it.”

  “I do,” Rackham said with a tight smile.

  Before I could move, Rackham had leaped to his feet and was waving. “Up here!” he shouted. “Up here!”

  22

  Murderous Machines

  I stared at Rackham. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?” I tasted something bitter in my mouth. “You’re betraying us!”

  He glanced down at me. “Don’t be foolish. I’m getting us down there as quickly and easily as I can. Hey! Up here!”

  Dr. Blood and Apprentice had stopped working on the sarcophagus and were staring at us. Then Apprentice spoke. A series of clicks came from the metal mask clamped across his face.

  Half a dozen automatic servants turned and clanked their way to the doors beneath the balcony. Apprentice’s cloak rose around him, spreading like wings. The tiny metal beetles that covered the cloak whirred. Apprentice lifted into the air and sped toward us. Metal footsteps sounded on the narrow stairs leading up to the balcony.

  “You’d better know what you’re doing,” I said.

  “No idea,” Rackham said cheerfully. “But if your father has a plan, I trust it.”

  “Ah … I wouldn’t quite say it’s a plan,” Papa said. “More, ah, an idea. Of sorts.”

  “That’s wonderful,” I muttered.

  Apprentice landed on the balcony next to us. His metal eyes glittered soullessly at us. Mina met his gaze with a nervous expression, but Apprentice’s face didn’t change. I didn’t even know if it could under all that metal. The mechanical beetles shifted restlessly on his cloak. At the other end of the balcony, the first of the automatic servants appeared, the blade where its left arm should have been raised.

  “I guess we’re going down.” I smiled at Apprentice. “You win. We surrender.”

  Dr. Blood was waiting for us by the sarcophagus. Each of us was shepherded by one of the automatic servants. Rackham warranted two, and their blades didn’t waver an inch from his skin. Others watched impassively from in front of the banks of machinery.

  I stayed as still as I could. I recognized these types of automatic servants. Despite the blades instead of arms, they were Papa’s finest model. They could react instantly to commands, and they were fast. I didn’t give myself more than a fifty–fifty chance of getting clear of the blade behind me before I was skewered.

  “You helped them,” Dr. Blood said coldly as Mina was brought up beside me. “You betrayed me.”

  She didn’t answer. She just stared at the floor.

  “No matter. I have you all now.” He turned to Papa. “I’m delighted, Hugo, that you can see what I’ve built. You always claimed I would achieve nothing, yet look at this.” He waved his hand around the throne room. “Nothing you have made is comparable. I have surpassed you, and while all that you do is for your own profit, I have worked only for the greater glory of Mars, our mother. I can have a hundred platforms armed like this within the year. If Napoleon or any other Earth usurper tries to invade, I will annihilate their forces before they can even land. Mars will stand triumphant.”

  “Then arm the Martian governments,” Rackham said. “Give them the help they need to defend this planet.”

  Dr. Blood sneered. “The Martian governments have always been subservient to Earth. British Mars! Chinese Mars! Turkish Mars! Patagonian Mars! Just listen to the names. Earth lays claim to Mars. No more! It is time for all true Martians to reclaim their destiny, to throw off the shackles of Earth and free their mother again.”

  Rothan Gal stared away over Blood’s head. Like all Native Martians, he wouldn’t meet the eyes of someone he did not know. “We will never allow the Martian emperors to rise again. Mars does not need emperors.”

  “Peasant!” Dr. Blood spat. He looked at the rest of us. “Today you will witness something that has not been seen for almost two thousand years. You will see a dragon awaken.”

  “From my egg,” Putty growled. “I didn’t say you could have it.” She glared. “You’d better not break it.”

  Blood ignored her. “Come. Let us begin.”

  He gestured to Apprentice, who crossed to a small table near the sarcophagus and brought back a small, sealed bottle.

  “This,” said Dr. Blood, “is the dust of a dragon. Until you translated the ideograms, I didn’t even know I needed it.”

  I frowned. “What’s the dust of a dragon?”

  “When the resin that protects the body of a preserved dragon is cut open, the body inside decays into dust. The chemical composition of the dust is extremely complex, and the process takes several weeks. Fortunately, it is a superstition among the ignorant natives that the dust of a dragon can cure certain diseases. I was able to obtain this.” He unsealed the bottle and poured the dust over the egg in the sarcophagus. It was so fine it flowed like water. “And so we are ready.”

  He picked up the key cylinder Mina had stolen from Lady Harleston. My heart dropped at the sight of it. If I hadn’t told Mina I’d found the key cylinder, none of this would have happened. Dr. Blood would have been helpless. But I’d wanted to impress her. I’d wanted to see her again.

  I should have thrown it in the Martian Nile.

  Dr. Blood inserted the cylinder carefully into the hole at the end of the sarcophagus, then adjusted a couple of dials. The rubber tubes above the sarcophagus began to vibrate, and a thin white gas drifted down over the egg.

  “You’re wasting your time,” I said. “That egg turned to stone hundreds of years ago. It’s dead.”

  Dr. Blood twisted the key cylinder. I heard cogs whir and tiny levers snap out. Something inside the stone sarcophagus began to hum.

  I watched, unable to take my eyes off the egg. I wasn’t the only one. Dr. Blood and Apprentice hovered over it, peering intently at the dials that surrounded it and at the egg itself.

  Something brushed my ear. I flinched, then realized that Papa had leaned in close.

  “I will need a minute,” Papa whispered. “A distraction.”

  I closed my eyes. The automatic servant’s blade was only inches from my back. What would it do if I moved? It might just stand there, or it might react by plunging the blade straight through me. I could almost feel the metal cutting into me.

  We had to stop Blood, though. We had to. It wasn’t just about me or my family. It was about the whole of Mars.

  I took a breath, then threw myself to the side, clattering into the automatic servant guarding Putty.

  Even though I’d moved as fast as I ever had, the automatic servant behind me reacted just as quickly. Its blade snapped forward, tracing an agonizing line along the side of my ribs. I shouted in pain as I knocked Putty’s automatic servant flying.

  Rackham twisted as I moved, turning inside one of his automatic servants and slamming into it. It tottered, then overbalanced with a crash.

  I scrambled to my feet and darted away as my automatic servant came after me. It was fast on its feet. Why on Mars had Papa worked so hard to improve this model? Why couldn’t he have left it as slow and clunky as the earlier ones?

  It swung for me again. I dived behind a pillar. The blade glanced off it. The other automatic servants came lurching from in front of the machinery. There must have been twenty of them. I was going to be sliced like an onion.

  I darted out from the pillar and took off across the floor, automatic servants in pursuit. Rackham was dancing in and out of the rest of them, pushing them at each other, but he wa
sn’t doing any damage.

  I hoped Papa had a good plan, because those automatic servants could keep going for hours. I risked a glance at him. He’d pulled out his pen and a piece of card and seemed to be jotting something on it.

  “Really not a good time for that!” I shouted as another automatic servant loomed up in front of me. Its blade thrust straight for my chest, but before it could hit, Putty crashed into it, spinning it around.

  “Thanks!” I puffed, then ducked away from another.

  This was a nightmare. In fact, I’d had nightmares like this, chased around and around while maniac machines tried to chop me into ribbons. We were doing so badly, Apprentice and Dr. Blood had gone back to work on the sarcophagus.

  “Edward!” Papa called. “Over here!”

  He waved his piece of card in the air.

  “Seriously?” I muttered. There were only about a dozen mad killing machines between me and him, all slashing the air with long blades that made swords look like butter knives. Putty, Rackham, Rothan Gal, and Mina couldn’t help, either. They had enough of their own automatic servants to deal with.

  I gritted my teeth and raced toward the murderous mechanicals, pulling off my jacket as I went. A dozen blades lifted toward me.

  I tossed my jacket up, just as I let myself fall to the floor and roll.

  I heard the horrible sound of ripping as my jacket was neatly shredded to rags. Then I was tumbling among their metal feet. A blade skidded off the floor beside me. I kept on tumbling, as the automatic servants slashed at me, getting in each other’s way and tangling together.

  I jumped up and kept on running.

  “You know,” I panted as I reached Papa, “you should think about some changes to their programming for the next model.”

  Papa peered at them over his glasses. “There do appear to be some flaws.…”

  He pushed the card at me. He had poked holes in it with his pen, leaving smears of ink.