Outlander 05 - Parallax Red

by James Axler

  The sunshine shafting through the observation port wasn't intolerably bright. In fact, it looked diffuse and pale, as if filtered through heavy cloud cover. Kane turned around, hand half-lifted to shield his eyes. It was an unnecessary gesture, but he didn't lower his arm. He was too busy being alternately stupefied and terrified.

  The light of dawn came through the transparent port, the sun just climbing over the rust red horizon, turning the pumpkin-colored sky a deep rose. In the far dis-tance, Kane saw a range of stone shouldering up from rock-strewed and barren ground. Much closer towered a structure, a mountain in the shape of a pyramid.

  It loomed frighteningly high, its gigantic red walls climbing sheer toward the sky. Kane had to tilt his head back to glimpse the apex, even though his wheeling thoughts told him the pyramid was at least half a mile away. It was gargantuan, immensely broad at the base and narrow at the top. He calculated that the bottom covered a square mile and a half and the top rose nearly six thousand feet.

  The dawn sun glinted faintly from a metal spire stretching from the pyramid's apex. It looked tiny and threadlike in relation to the structure supporting it, but he figured it had to be a minimum of five hundred feet long.

  The side facing him bore a deep V-shaped depression, symmetrical and running the length of the pyramid, from bottom to top. Between the arms of the V, Kane saw great flights of steps leading up from the desert floor.

  The pyramid exuded antiquity, a history so incalculably ancient that it couldn't be measured by millennia and perhaps not even aeons. Fragmented memories of the Anasazi's Cliff Palace, the Black City of Kharo-Khoto and the tumulus of Newgrange flitted through his mind. He knew, without knowing how he did, that by the age standards of the immense pyramid, they had been built but an hour ago.

  He heard a hissing sound behind him, but he did not, could not turn, not even when Sindri's amused voice said, "Welcome to my hometown, Mr. Kane. Welcome to Cydonia. Welcome to Mars."

  Kane was so dazed, his thought processes so frozen into immobility, he allowed Sindri to nudge him gently away from the window and guide him to the hatch with gentle taps of his walking stick.

  "Don't act so startled," Sindri said as they stepped from the room into a narrow, tunnel-like hallway. "I certainly mentioned my birthplace enough times for you to get used to the idea."

  Kane didn't reply. Intellectually he had accepted Sindri's claim of extraterrestrial origin, but to wake up on another planet was an emotionally stunning experience.

  Hoarsely he said, "You brought us here last night, while we were unconscious?"

  "Partly correct and partly incorrect," responded Sindri blithely. "You were definitely unconscious, but I brought you here two days agoMartian standard time."

  Kane's mind reeled. Lakesh had probably given them up for dead by now. "Why?" he rasped.

  Sindri, walking a few paces ahead, stopped and turned to face him. "Why did I bring you here or why did I keep you unconscious?"

  "Both."

  "Remember me saying I had to show you my reasons rather than tell you?"

  Kane nodded.

  "There is your answer."

  A hot flush of anger burned away the last of the paralysis gripping Kane. Teeth bared, he lunged for Sindri, hands outstretched to secure a stranglehold.

  Sindri sidestepped with a gliding grace and speed that deceived the eye. The silver knob of his walking stick drove deeply into the pit of Kane's stomach. His breath burst from his lips in an agonized grunt.

  Stumbling, Kane tried to keep from bending double. From the corner of his eye, he saw the silver-tipped cane descending. The blow to the back of his head, delivered with a sharp economy, knocked him to his hands and knees, multicolored pinwheels spiraling before his eyes.

  The walking stick cracked against his wrists, sweeping his arms out from under him, and he fell face-first to the floor. He struggled to rise, but a bone-deep boring pressure on the clump of ganglia at the base of his skull kept him prone. Sindri leaned his weight on his stick, the ferrule pressing into the back of Kane's neck.

  "Very foolish of you," he said in a low voice. "Your reaction is understandable. Naturally you resent the liberties I have taken with you, but cooperation will be in the best interests of all."

  Sindri whipped away the stick, taking two swift steps back as Kane pushed himself up by shaky arms. "Besides," he continued, "you are very weak. Other than receiving fluids intravenously, you've had nothing to eat or drink for two full days. I've no wish to take advantage of a man half-dead from want."

  Kane climbed to his feet, refusing to give Sindri the satisfaction of seeing him rub the sore spot at the back of his neck. "Where are Baptiste and Grant?"

  "Here, where do you think? I'm taking you to themthat is if you can stop being bellicose for just a few moments."

  He turned and strode purposefully down the hall. After a moment of glaring after him, Kane followed.

  "You brought us here with a gateway?"

  "How else could I get you to Mars in less than a year?"

  "You kept all of us asleep for two days?"

  "It wasn't an arbitrary decision, Mr. Kane. It saved me and my aides a considerable amount of time and trouble."

  "You might have asked us," Kane grated, "rather than abduct us."

  "And have you refuse me? I couldn't take that chance." Sindri cast him an impish smile. "Besides, the Cydonia Compound has such a long tradition of abduction that it would be remiss of me not to uphold it."

  "On the station, you said we could leave shortly."

  Sindri stopped in front of another iris hatch. "So I did, and so you did. Didn't you leave Parallax Red and in fairly short order, too?"

  Kane started to snarl out a curse, but the hatchway irised open and Sindri stepped through. After a second's hesitation, Kane followed suit.

  The room was big, dome-shaped and full of furniture, but it smelled of damp and mildew. Old water stains streaked the walls beneath small metal vents. Tall bookshelves stood here and there, and Kane let his eyes rove over the titles visible on bindings as he walked past.

  He saw Auerbach's Mimesis , seven volumes of The Cambridge Medieval History , Tarkington's Complete Penrod , Burroughs's Gods of Mars , Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities , Nietzsche's Selected Discourses , Darwin's Origin of Species , D'aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants and Melville's Moby Dick . Two entire shelves appeared to be only technical manuals, most of them spiral bound.

  Since Kane wasn't familiar with any of the works, he couldn't glean any insight on Sindri's personality from them. A knowledge of literature, classic or otherwise, hadn't been part of his ville upbringing.

  A quartet of male trolls stood stiffly at equidistant points around the room, hands behinds their backs in parade-rest positions. Grant and Brigid sat at a disk-topped table and when they saw Kane, they stood up, their faces reflecting conflicting emotions. In their expressions he read relief, anxiety and anger.

  There was another emotion glimmering in Brigid's eyes, a shame she struggled to contain or come to terms with. Grant, like him, sported beard stubble.

  Plates of food, plastic dinnerware and bottles of water were on the table, and Sindri pointed Kane toward it. "Dig in, refresh yourself. Your friends refused to eat until you joined them. Mealtime manners are one of the few qualities I admire in Terrans."

  Kane pulled out a chair that felt and looked like lightweight plastic and sat down. After exchanging silent glances, they started to eat. If the food was strange, their stomachs, if not their palates, accepted it as adequate.

  After a few minutes of silence, broken only by the clicking of eating utensils against plates, Sindri sighed deeply. "Come, come, people! Where is the sprightly conversation? You're on Mars! Aren't you the slightest bit excited by the prospect of exploring a strange new world and seeking out new life and civilizations?"

  Grant picked up a plastic, blunt-pointed knife. He pointed it at Sindri like an accusatory finger. "Come over here, and I'll show you how fucking exc
ited I am."

  Sindri made a tsk-tsk sound of disapproval and strode quickly to a wall switch. "Perhaps you need visual aids. A dining room with a view ought to stir the blood."

  At a touch of the switch, the walls of the room seemed to vanish in yard-wide, floor-to-ceiling increments. By segments, the room became transparent.

  Outside they saw a low collection of buildings, nearly all of them domed and made of a dull, lusterless metal. They were interconnected by tubes composed of the same material.

  "Cydonia Compound One," Sindri announced. "A poor place, but mine ownand hopefully for not much longer."

  Beyond a fenced-in perimeter spread a seemingly endless desert of orange-red sand. Low ridges rose naked from the desolate landscape and grew into a distant, barren mountain range.

  Miles to the west rose a vast bulk of stone, a smoothly contoured formation that resembled a slightly squashed mesa.

  "Be calm," said Sindri. "Accept. You are now thirty-five million miles from the planet of your birth. The temperature outside at noon will be a balmy fifty degrees Fahrenheit and around two hundred degrees below zero at midnight.

  "The surface gravity is less than half that of Earth, and its atmospheric pressure is about eight millibars. The air is composed mainly of carbon dioxide. If we were not safe inside this pressurized habitat, we would all die within minutes."

  Sindri paused, grinning crookedly. "So, as I hope you understand, regardless of the current conditions on Earth, they are far and away superior to that of Mars."

  Kane tore his eyes away from the vast panorama of desolation and focused them on Sindri. "All right, we understand you want to leave. You claimed you needed to leave."

  Sindri's grin twisted, molding itself into a grimace. "I also said my reasons defied the limitations of descriptive language. Do you three feel strong enough to undertake a little walking tour?"

  Before any of them had the opportunity to respond, Sindri flourished his cane in a grand gesture. "Excellent. Let us be off."

  Chapter 22

  Flanked by the retinue of trolls, they followed Sindri out into the tunnel-like passageway. Walking backward, facing them, he said, "I know what you want to ask." Affecting a childish, ingenuous falsetto, he stated, '"But, Perfessor Sindri, if we is on Mars, how come we can breathe so good an' we ain't floating around, losin' our breakfasts on the ceiling, how come?'"

  Reverting to his normal tone, he announced, "This section of the compound is equipped with a network of small, synthetic-gravity generators. The field is created by a controlled stream of gravitons. That hum you hear is produced by the generators.

  "Atmospheric processing units are located throughout the compound, maintaining a breathable mixture by removing carbon dioxide and other waste gases. It is recirculated through the system of processors."

  He darted into a wide, outward-bulging niche in the tunnel wall, touched a button and a shutter slid up, affording them another view of the compound. It was just as dreary as the first one. Rust-hued sand spread listlessly, piling up in drifts at the bases of the domes. A few of the habitats were larger than others, their exteriors faintly etched with window lines.

  Sindri said, "There are the barracks, the manufacturing facilities, the nurseries."

  "Nurseries?" echoed Kane. "For what?"

  "Children," Sindri replied disdainfully. "Not plants."

  Lowering his gaze, Kane saw a small object squatting on the ground between two of the tube tunnels. Flat topped and suspended by an assembly of tread-enclosed rollers, it looked vaguely like a toy version of a Sandcat.

  He pointed to it. "What's that? One of the children's playthings?"

  Sindri chuckled. "Actually no, but it became one. That is the Mars Pathfinder, landed here by NASA in the late 1990s. It was quite the public-relations coup for them, since it helped to quell rumors they were deliberately concealing facts about Mars from the American citizenry."

  He sighed a little sadly. "As a child, I spent many a happy hour romping around with the old Pathfinder. I'd put on an environmental suit and sit on it for hours, imagining it was taking me to all sorts of exciting places. Like Earth."

  "That's what you brought us to Mars to see?" Grant growled.

  Sindri barked out a laugh, turning around and leaving the niche. "Hardly. Come with me. We'll start out slow, just for you, Mr. Grant."

  As they followed Sindri down the tunnel, Kane stepped close to Brigid. "You okay, Baptiste?" he whispered. "You haven't spoken a word."

  She shook her head. "Not now, not while he's around."

  He didn't argue. Her entire stance telegraphed tension and a barely leashed fear. When she said "he" there was no disguising the loathing in her voice.

  They passed many of the irislike hatches. More than one bore plastic signs red-imprinted with the exclamatory notice, Warning! Low Grav And Atmo Conditions Beyond! Transadapts Only!

  After seeing several of the sign-adorned hatchways, Kane asked, "What are transadapts?"

  "A euphemism," retorted Sindri.

  "For what?"

  "For my people. Those doors lead to their living areas. You would find them most uncomfortable, not very far removed from the worst conditions aboard Parallax Red ."

  He walked a few more yards down the passage and stopped before a hatch on the right-hand wall. It opened, and he stood by expectantly ushering the three outlanders and the trolls through with waves of his cane. After the last troll had entered, Sindri stepped in and the iris sealed behind him.

  They found themselves in a room like a small theater, with two dozen chairs grouped in a double circle around an elevated stage. An array of what appeared to be light fixtures hung above it.

  "Take seats anywhere," Sindri instructed.

  "Why?" demanded Grant.

  "Entertainment and education, a blend that cannot be beat."

  Reluctantly they sat down in the chairs, the trolls seating themselves behind them. Sindri climbed to the stage, standing in the center of it. They saw he held a small remote-control box in his left hand, and his thumb pressed one of its buttons. He was instantly cast in a halo of light from one of the overhead fixtures.

  Clasping his hands atop the silver knob of his cane, he cleared his throat and stentoriously announced,

  "What you are about to see is a presentation made midway in the year 2000, for the oversight funding committee of Overprojects Excalibur and Majestic. Crafted by state-of-the art holographic artists, its sole aim was to impress visiting dignitaries so they would increase the operational budget of the Cydonia Compound. I'm not sure if they ever saw it.

  "Certainly, I know it by heart. After you've sat through it, hopefully you will know my heart and find it within yours not to judge my actions too harshly."

  He bowed his head humbly for a moment. Kane wondered if he was waiting for a round of applause.

  As Sindri left the stage, shimmering veils of multicolored light sprang up, expanding to encompass its entire length and breadth. The light shifted in color and shape. One moment the stage was empty, and in the next a man stepped forward. He was completely three-dimensional, and his sudden appearance surprised and confused Kane for a moment. His attention seemed narrowed to a point in the theater slightly to the left and behind Brigid.

  The man was fairly young and prosperous, judging by the slight fleshiness around his chin. His dark hair was neatly combed, and his features bore an Asian cast. He wore a tailored one-piece bodysuit of a deep red. The words Cydonia One were worked in yellow thread upon the breast. He looked slightly familiar to Kane.

  "I am Dr. Kuo Liang, the overseer of Project Sigma and now serving as a special scientific liaison between Overprojects Majestic and Excalibur."

  At the introduction, Kane recognized him. In the disastrous mission to the past, he and Brigid had briefly seen Kuo Liang in Lakesh's company on New Year's

  Eve, 2000. But that had been only a version of this man, in an alternate temporal plane.

  "I bid all of you the warmest
of welcomes to Mars," Kuo Liang continued. "At this time of year, I imagine you don't find it all that different from Washington."

  He paused, smiling, waiting for an anticipated wave of appreciative laughter to die down.

  "Oh, fucking fireblast," Grant half groaned, scuffling his feet on the floor.

  Sindri sat down beside him, whispering fiercely, "Hush! No talking while the feature is in progress. You'll disturb the other patrons."

  The hologram of Kuo Liang nodded to the audience politely. "Yes, I am aware that some of you find our undertaking here frightfully costly, especially after the Soviets withdrew their support. I also know how difficult adjusting the budgets to keep this project hidden from congressional bean counters can be. However, the progress we have made here in the last decade makes the expenditure of every dime more than worth it. But enough of words. Pictures speak far louder. Ladies and gentlemen... I gi ve you... Mars !''

  Kuo Liang vanished instantly, swallowed up in a blaze of light and a brassy musical fanfare, full of horns and heavy kettle drums. Sindri waved his cane in time to the music, as if he were conducting an orchestra.

  The three-dimensional image of a rust red planet appeared on the stage, swelling to fill it, seeming to speed toward them. Even though they were sitting down, they had the impression of soaring over a vista of huge craters, mountain ranges, channels cutting through arid ground and dead sea bottoms.

  A deep male voice, in rich mahogany tones, declaimed, "Mars, named after the Roman god of war, the fourth planet in orbit from the sun, smaller than Earth, only 4,212 miles in diameter. The oxides trapped in surface mineral deposits give the planet its red tint in the evening sky. Of all the planets in the solar system, Mars is uniqueit alone can change its axial direction in space by as much as twenty-four degrees."

  The voice droned on, providing a history of the fascination held by all Earth cultures toward Mars. The three-dimensional image on the stage continued to display a leisurely flyover of monotonous terrain.