The Aethers of Mars

by Eric Flint

  When Conrad’s eyes finally showed him the world of the present once again, he saw that the last light was fading, giving way to darkness. The orange sun had grown larger and murkier, diffusing itself across the light-smeared horizon. On his first approach to Al Qahira, von Harrer had tarried to sit on the sands at Giza and watch the sunset glaze the pyramids: fading triangles that sat squat and timeless on the horizon. His mind’s eye could still make out the cowl of the sphinx, the faint light limning its supine contours. It was an enigmatic posture, a recline that did not suggest rest but, rather, endless watching. A pitiless gaze which had seen the death of many an age, perhaps many a species. It was easy to believe that such blank eyes had always looked out on barrenness, knew nothing else, could augur nothing else.

  Von Harrer let his own gaze slip from the window and back into the room, rolling like a lazy ball from one empty corner to another. His eyes touched the spaces that had once been occupied by his possessions: a lamp with crystal pendants, a little mahogany liquor cabinet, a roll-top desk, and a dresser. Faint shadows on the floor marked their old territories, darker where the boards had been spared the bleaching stare of the sun.

  All gone now. All gone to the same place. He turned his eyes back to the meerschaum pipe-bowl. All gone there.

  Cravings jumped up at the thought, the sight, of the pipe. The meerschaum eyes laughed, invited: just once more.

  He turned away, looked at the bare wall against which his bed was pushed. He could still feel that mocking leer boring into his back, the dull ivory eyes promising: you’ll almost forget.

  You’ll almost forget the clusters of dart-shaped steel rods that screamed down from nearly twenty miles above Johannesburg, glowing with heat when they impacted, the ground vomiting upward in waves, shot through with flame—right before the blast knocked everything flat.

  You’ll almost forget the airships hovering out of rifle range, dropping bomb after bomb, only leaving to get more from Rhodes’ secret arsenals of death, hidden safe behind the British lines.

  You’ll almost forget the endless litter of civilian dead on the retreat back through what was left of Johannesburg, particularly the children, their little bodies blown apart by the concussive forces, their little heads—blonde, brown, and black—rolled up against walls or into ditches like those of decapitated dolls.

  You’ll almost forget the defeat, the camps, the dysentery, the hunger, the understandably vengeful African guards and, finally, the stumbling silhouettes of the internees who were evicted due to disease or frailty. Within the first one hundred yards, each one unfailingly attracted a loping cluster of cape dogs or jackals, whose patience was invariably rewarded by a taste of human flesh.

  But opium’s promise of forgetfulness was a lie. The memories never evaporated; they were simply disordered. Even when his head was filled to the point of nausea with the musk-sweet fumes, visions of the past always trespassed upon the present. But instead of complete scenes of the South African war, they came as splintered flashes of carnage, each image frozen onto a separate shard of the shattering mirror that was his mind, his memories.

  He looked out the southwest window toward Giza again, wished he could see the pyramids: there, death and order were made one. It might be just a glorified version of “burial detail,” but at least it had been raised to the level of an art form, a triumph of human construction over the forces of time. Thousands had worked so that the memory of at least one man might transcend death, his identity combined and transmuted into the sheer awe of the towering stone, pointing out the way to his communion with the gods. It did not matter that the beliefs upon which it was built were sheer nonsense: it was a testimony to the human determination that the force of memory should overcome the power of death.

  But that age was past. Now, men destroyed more than they built, left no legacies other than churned earth, smoldering ruins, and mass graves—just like the ones paupers inherited, here in Al Qahira. Paupers who, like he, had lost everything. Von Harrer scanned the room again: the walls and floor stared back, blank—except for his night table and the demon perched upon it, the smiling lips faded but seductive, wearing the same grin that had been on the face of his brutal assailant the previous night.

  Which is why, Conrad realized suddenly, he remembered that smile more than the blows which had damaged his body. Because the greatest wounds had been inflicted by the unspoken words behind that savage grin: Now you are nothing. No law protects you, no promise made to you need be kept. You have no pride, no power, no respect; you are not a man. You are nothing.

  Von Harrer’s left arm uncoiled like a striking snake, swatting the pipe across the room. Meerschaum shattered against the far wall, spattered into smaller chips as those pieces hit the floor.

  He lay motionless for a long second, observing himself as though from a great distance. And then, without warning, the distance was gone. Conrad felt himself return to his body, felt a chill ripple down his torso, his arms, his legs—and sensed that he was about to implode into a cold, focused murderousness once again. He discovered he could check that plunge—barely—by concentrating on not doing so. But then his mind began to slip, he felt himself start to tumble down into himself—until he fixed his concentration on the shattered pieces of meerschaum. He started to count them, taking care to note the peculiarities of each shard’s shape so that he would not count it twice …

  By the time he had counted to seven, he discovered that he had swung back from the steep slope that led down to where the implosion of his selfhood would evert, threatening to burst forth as mindless sociopathia. Evidently, the narrowing of consciousness that this new drug could impart during a crisis also helped him fight off any residual effects of the opium. Which meant that, at least for now, whatever Al-Aftal had put in his last pipeful was ironically helping Conrad get through the earliest stages of withdrawal. And the more control he had, and could keep, the better.

  So: he would live without the opium. And while life might be no more precious now than it was a minute ago, his final scrap of pride—the power to be the arbiter of his own demise—was not only still in his possession, but might ultimately become the cornerstone upon which to rebuild what the opium had eroded.

  That realization—and resolve—was refreshing, like alpine water splashed sharply into one’s face. But von Harrer knew he could not maintain the sharp-edged clarity he needed unless it was fixed upon an object of intense urgency, something more riveting that counting broken pieces of meerschaum. And he already knew the best way to both maintain that focus, and also harness the ever-incipient implosion into murderous sociopathia to a useful purpose. He would go to Al-Aftal’s and take back what had been taken from him.

  He stretched his neck to test the extent of pain and, crudely, the limits of the muscle damage. Well, not so bad after all. Much less extensive than the concussion he had received from being too close to a flurry of dirigible-dropped dynamite bombs on the retreat from the siegeworks around Port Elizabeth. Of course, he had had the discipline to master pain easily then. Since coming to Al Qahira and into the embrace of opium, that strength of will had slipped from him even faster than his possessions. But it had not disappeared entirely; calling upon it now, he could feel it stirring, returning, wavering but glad for the summons, like a neglected hound staggering back to its master.

  He looked out the window and directly into the setting sun. 5:30 PM in this latitude, plus or minus 15 minutes. He could feel poppy-nurtured lethargy threaten his focus as he studied the horizon—and realized that he could not afford any quiet reveries: he needed to remain in motion, to stay active in pursuit of specific tasks, until he collapsed into exhausted sleep.

  Conrad rose to his feet, felt strong. Surprisingly strong. Stronger than I should, he realized: probably another strange gift of whatever was put in my opium. That, and the energy that came from having a strong purpose once again—such as seeking personal redress and, perhaps, a bit of vengeance.

  Square-legged, he st
ood at the small, narrow dresser that served as his night-table, opened its battered bottom drawer, and removed the last bundle of his old possessions, all stored in the grey, standard-issue haversack that had accompanied him on the long journey from Bavaria to Africa. He removed his last possession of any value—a 7.63 mm Mauser with extended magazine well—and, inspecting it, watched as its long, tapering 6” barrel caught a final spindle of the red-orange sunset. Its wooden holster—which doubled as a detachable stock—was still sound, as were the twelve, fully loaded stripper clips of ten rounds each. He released the safety, opened the action, inserted one of the clips into the top of the magazine, pushed down on the vertical stack of bullets until the topmost—the last—was seated firmly. Maintaining light pressure on the hammer, he repeated the process with another of the ten-round “chargers”, after which he removed his thumb from the hammer. He pulled out the empty clip, and the bolt ran home with a sharp crack.

  He placed the weapon and its holster on the bed before removing the last contents of the haversack: his old fatigues, tightly rolled around cedar shavings. The swirl of memories that were released when he unrolled them, both bitter and sweet, nearly staggered him. Once again, he felt the camaraderie and purpose that suffused his regiment when it had debarked at Luderitz in German Southwest Africa, the thrill of impending victory less than five months later, and then the horror and despair that had rained down upon them in the shape of bombs from dirigibles and rods from beyond the clouds, from the very edge of space itself.

  He pushed the images away: no, no memories tonight. Not for a long time. Memories made him susceptible to his craving for opium, weakened him, slowed him, broke the chain of action. Action. He needed action. And he needed it now.

  Pulling on his fatigues with fast, rough familiarity, he planned out his route to Al-Aftal’s house: he would head west, but not along the main road, the shari Al-Azhar. Rather, he would wind through the labyrinth of alleys to its north, avoiding any official eyes that might later remember him, any blackcoats that might detain him. But once he had finished his—visit—to Al-Aftal’s, then where? After tonight, Al Qahira would not be safe for him. So he had to think beyond retrieving his money, beyond avenging himself and rejuvenating the last scraps of pride he possessed: he had to think about how he would get out of the city, where he would flee to, and what he would need for that journey.

  By the time he had set that firm task list for himself—and realized that the answers to these questions would largely be determined by what occurred at Al-Aftal’s—he found himself already standing in his fatigues, four more fully loaded chargers in his pockets. The detachable stock bulged awkwardly in the haversack that was slung low behind him, just above his rump. The holster-stock inside it was both concealed and cushioned by the shoddy street clothes he kept only because they might be a useful disguise, or a dinar’s worth of barter, sooner or later.

  Yet, as little as he was carrying, Conrad still wished he could shed weight. Sustained combat in South Africa had taught him the true meaning and value of “traveling light,” and he momentarily regretted that he possessed the bulkiest of Mausers: it was considerably more cumbersome than those whose frames incorporated a customary ten-round magazine. But the trade-off—a weapon that was somewhat more clumsy but with twice the magazine capacity—was probably a blessing in disguise tonight. Al-Aftal usually had at least a dozen of his half-fed bandits around at any given time and they would not give Conrad the chance to reload very frequently—if at all. About which the close assaults into the Port Elizabeth trench lines had taught him one extremely relevant, and invariably true, lesson: that when the shooting starts, it is best to be able to keep rounds going down-range—almost without interruption—until the combat is over.

  Von Harrer moved to the window. The light in the west was too dim to silhouette the far horizon behind which the pyramids were hidden. He decided he would miss those gargantuan tombs; although forbidding, they might also be the sentinels of something good in man. Nothing as lofty as hope, but at least they epitomized that perverse, persistent resolve to be greater than death. And maybe even a dogged will to survive. And for now, that was good enough for him.

  He turned to leave, saw an eye peering up at him from the floor. A section of brow still curving inquisitively above it, the meerschaum pupil held his gaze for a second. Then, with great deliberateness, Conrad von Harrer took his first step toward the door. Meerschaum ground dryly under the heel of his boot. He strode briskly out, shut the door tightly behind him, heard the lock snap into place, pulled the key out of his breast pocket, and slid it under the door.

  Truly, now, there was no turning back.

  * * *

  Hidden in the nighttime shadows not far from where Al Qahira’s Old Wall met the bricks of the Bab al-Futuh’s western tower, Conrad von Harrer watched as a caftaned figure strolled away from the door of a house across the small square. For the third time this evening, that figure began to walk a slow circuit around the isolated building, one hand settled on the hilt of a narrow tulwar. The guard’s glittering eyes swept across the lightless windows that flanked the street, his head turning slightly and pausing at the faintest sound from an adjacent roof.

  The Cairene turned the far corner and into a narrow street, hard-packed sand rasping under his receding sandals. Using that sound to mask his own movement, von Harrer slipped out of the shadows, across the square, and around the other side of the house. Keeping close to its wall, he moved to the rear of the building and edged the left half of his face around that corner. The guard had not reached the opposite rear corner, but the steady rasp of his sandals was drawing closer to it. Five yards behind the house was a large cistern at which von Harrer had occasionally relieved his thirst. He crossed to and slid behind it as he unsheathed a short, broad knife and merged into its shadow.

  That shadow fell eastward, away from a dim but steady light that sprang up from the direction of the Nile. That light was unlike the softer, wavering glows that emanated from oil lamps and ebbed out of shuttered windows into the Old City’s dusty lanes. This was a steady, whiter halo that stretched across half the western skyline. It limned the flat, stacked roofs that it crested and marked the ceaseless activity in Al Qahira’s European quarter. There, the nightly gaiety at Shepeard’s Hotel threw bright electric harshness up into the sky. It marked the parks and clubs on Gezirah Island, where gowned ladies spun in silken whirlpools at military balls. It marked the docks at Baluq, where steam-smoking river liners disgorged streams of tourists who brought money and the inclination to spend it freely. And not just in the clubs and the suqs—the congested, trackless bazaars that Al Qahira was famed for—but also in the less-well-advertised districts and establishments that lurked like dark secrets behind Al Qahira’s bright facade of colonial propriety.

  Since the South African War, many of von Harrer’s fellow Europeans—but particularly the English—had become bolder, had begun to discover the exotic pleasures of opium, hashish, kat. And slowly, he reflected with a brittle smile, they, too, discovered the gnawing dependence and mounting cost of what they had mistakenly imagined would be an occasional, discreet, but deliciously wicked indulgence.

  The guard’s steps were coming closer, the scraping having lost the accompanying whisper of a trailing echo. That meant the sound was no longer funneled down an alley, which in turn meant that the guard had turned the corner. The business-like stride broke briefly: von Harrer peeked around the well-shadowed side of the cistern.

  The guard had stopped, his eyes losing their watchfulness as they seemed to succumb and be drawn to the same alluring glow over the western rooftops. The guard resumed his circuit, albeit more slowly, but his gaze was still westward.

  Von Harrer hefted a small rock, moved to keep the bulk of the cistern between him and the guard as the sandals scraped closer and then abreast of his position.

  The guard’s eyes finally left the night-lit horizon, blinked as they readjusted to the surrounding darkness.


  Seizing that moment, von Harrer tossed the stone back behind the guard—

  —who, hearing it clatter in the alley he had just left, spun. Tulwar starting to clear the sheath, the Cairene had almost fully reversed his facing to confront whatever was behind him—before starting to swing back again almost as quickly.

  Even as von Harrer launched himself toward the guard’s back, he admired the street-senses that had checked his adversary’s first reaction. The Cairene had evidently discerned that the sound made by the stone was either too faint or too atypical to signify a human approach, that is was merely a pebble thrown to distract.

  Stepping outside the guard’s turn, von Harrer used his left hand to catch and curl around the guard’s mouth, pulling sharply backward in the same motion. His stubby knife entered just to the left of the Arab’s spine and arced up under the shoulder blade: a surgeon’s thrust that found and stilled the heart.

  Fearing the sound of the body’s fall, he clutched the guard’s corpse close. Together, they were an irregular mass of darkness that swayed softly, then steadied. Slowly, Conrad lowered the inert half of the shadow to the ground alongside the cistern. Remaining crouched, he flowed back around the rear corner and toward the front of the house.

  Once there, he sidestepped up to the first shuttered window, listening. A dim murmur of voices. Von Harrer sunk lower, scuttled beneath the window and rose slightly once he had cleared to the other side. He listened briefly and then drew closer to the faint horizontal bars of yellow light that leaked out from behind the European-style shutters. He squinted, trying to see beyond the slats and the curlicues of peeling paint that clung to them.