The Aethers of Mars

by Eric Flint

  A light tap on his shoulder. “I say, Mr. Kuhn, sorry to disturb you.” Stans was on his feet, pulling a glove on his left hand, the hook-like handle of a thoroughly iconoclastic umbrella looped snugly around that wrist. The mouth under his trim, silvering mustache was smiling; his eyes were watchful, assessing. “But didn’t you hear the call?”

  Conrad swallowed. “No.”

  “Debarkation procedures are to commence in fifteen minutes, Mr. Kuhn. Time to start your Martian safari!”

  * * *

  Half an hour later, the gangway ramp lowered.

  Comparatively weak light flooded into the spartan egress bay. Following close behind it was a singular odor that pervaded the space in moments. It was sewage and perfume; it was freshly broken flint and slow-cooking grains; it was iron filings and swamp-musk. And yet, it was none of these things, entirely: it was a mystery that was also, somehow, a promise. But of what, Conrad had no idea.

  Most of the passengers recoiled from the mélange of odors. Another sizable group—mostly seasoned travelers to the colonized expanses of Earth—were indifferent to it. A very few—like Conrad—leaned forward to immerse themselves in it.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” announced the Agincourt’s executive officer, and commander of its aetherboat shuttle, “you are now free to debark. Please make your way steadily to the bottom of the ramp, where you will find your personal luggage. Any freighted goods can be claimed with the aid of the assistant purser, who you will find at the cargo ramp amidships.

  “Please observe caution when moving: Mars’ gravity is one half of Earth’s. So it is a bit more than what you felt when the Agincourt’s hull was spinning. However, just as you became accustomed to the seeming gravity imparted by the centrifugal force, you may also have become accustomed to its Coriolis effects. So bear in mind that now, things fall down directly and fly straight.

  “And of course, we reiterate our safe travel warning one last time. Do not wear any jewelry or watches until you are within the walls of a traveler’s or diplomatic compound. On the open streets, Martian thieves are usually quicker and subtler than the most proficient of their ilk on Earth.

  “Finally, it has been our pleasure having you on board the SA Agincourt, and Cecil Rhodes expresses his personal welcome to Mars—and reminds you that if you remain alert, you will remain safe during your many adventures on this exciting and exotic new world!”

  Conrad had edged slowly but steadily forward during the announcements and was now only one rank back from the roped-off end of the ramp. On the one hand, he did not want to look suspiciously over-eager to debark; on the other hand, he did not want the rather singular contents of his stowed luggage to be on extended display.

  The aetherboat’s executive officer removed the rope barrier. As the crowd started down the ramp, Conrad began scanning for his luggage: a mismatched pair of well-worn railway valises he’d purchased for a few dinar in Helwan. As he neared the bottom of the ramp, he spotted them, back near the amidships luggage bay. He reached the ground and turned casually in that direction: so far, so good.

  As he approached the amidships luggage pick-up, he noticed that the local stevedores—thin, wiry fellows with ears so tall that they crested the tops of their heads—were being overseen by the private troops of Rhodes’ British Extra-Planetary Company. And overseeing those surly looking guards was a British blackcoat, rust-colored dust having turned all the white piping of his uniform the color of muddy henna. No reason to be anxious, Conrad told himself, walking past the Lee-Enfield-armed troops; this looks like standard precautions against theft.

  The assistant purser looked up as Conrad approached. “Name, please?”

  “Kuhn, Klaus. Cabin 17 F.”

  “Thank you, sir. Receipt for luggage?” Conrad produced it. “Thank you.” The assistant purser inspected it, nodded, put it aside.

  “Excuse me, but I would like to get—”

  “If I could trouble you for just a moment more of your time, sir; we need a special detail to convey your goods to you.”

  Conrad felt a sudden flash of heat on his brow. This might be a routine procedure when it came to releasing weapons back to their owner, or it might be the first step in—

  “Mr. Kuhn, I wonder if I might ask you a few questions?”

  Von Harrer turned, saw the man he expected to see: the blackcoat. From either side, a Company guard who had been watching over the valises and trunks a moment ago now drifted into a position on each of his rear flanks. Damn it. I’m going to have to run for it, leave the weapons—

  But the soldier—a sergeant in his forties—must have seen the look of impending flight in Conrad’s eyes. The blackcoat nodded; the Company guards on either side each grabbed an arm and twisted it up behind Conrad as the sergeant took a sharp step back, drawing a Webley as he did. “Mr. Kuhn—if that is your real name—I wonder if you could explain why you are carrying a British rifle, a heavy handgun, and a large automatic pistol in your luggage. Planning on starting a war?”

  “I am planning on going hunting,” Conrad said. Even in his own ears, it sounded too rehearsed, too facile.

  “Yes, Sergeant, that’s what he claims,” commented a familiar voice.

  Conrad looked up; Stans was smiling down at him from the top of the luggage ramp.

  “However, Switzers do not usually hunt with the Empire’s latest Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifles. Which, unless I’m much mistaken, is exactly the kind of muzzle I see poking out from the end of that longer valise.

  “But I could be wrong. About his being a Swiss national, that is. I’ve spent some time attending to banking matters in Zurich, you see. And unless I am much mistaken, his is not a Swiss accent. It’s a reasonably good imitation of one. I’d guess he’s actually Bavarian or from the west of Austria. His accent would doubtless be good enough to fool most foreigners—but not quite good enough to fool me, I’m afraid. Ich spreche ganz gut Deutsch, wissen Sie. [I speak extremely good German, you know.]”

  Von Harrer kept his voice level. “My background is my own affair. As is the rifle I choose to hunt with.”

  The sergeant looked from Conrad up to Stans. Barnes was now there as well, his puffing mustache and florid cheeks reminiscent of the popular parodies of Kitchener. “The man’s got a point, he does, sir,” observed the blackcoat deferentially.

  “Yes,” mused Stans, “I suppose he does. But when I reported my suspicions about Mr. Kuhn to the purser a quarter hour ago, we found something else that is, I think, rather definitively incriminating. Please check the shorter valise.”

  The sergeant did so, stopped as he opened it. “Crikey! That’s army issue ammo! Still fresh in the boxes!”

  “And so it is,” observed Stans with a smile. “I wonder how Mr. Kuhn came by that. Don’t you, Sergeant? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you found some other objects of interest in his luggage, objects that the assistant purser and I may have missed in our haste. You might find it rewarding to make a closer examination. And as for you, Mr. ‘Kuhn,’—happy hunting!” With a final smile sending crinkles out from the sides of his pale blue eyes, he started down the personnel walkway on the side margin of the cargo ramp. Behind him, Barnes glowered at Conrad, spat inexpertly—a broad spray rather than a single gobbet of focused hatred—and snapped, “Hun scum.” He followed Stans down the ramp and toward the bow of the shuttle.

  Conrad shrugged and shook his head. “Sergeant, I won’t make any trouble—”

  “Damned right you won’t,” snarled the blackcoat, who punched the Webley, barrel first, straight into von Harrer’s gut.

  Doubling over, and feeling the first of what were to be a sustained flurry of rifle butt-strokes slamming into the small of his back, Conrad had a final glimpse of Stans walking lightheartedly toward the lavender and rose towers of Coprates, jauntily twirling his umbrella like a walking stick.

  * * *

  As Conrad swam back up toward full consciousness, he felt himself being pushed roughly upright against a d
usty mortar wall. Curses in Spanish—Spanish?—were loud in his ear: Qué idiota. Deja de caer abajo! [What an idiot. Stop falling down!] Well, there might be reason to assert he was an idiot—but if he’d been falling down, he couldn’t remember it. Hands were moving swiftly, inexpertly, through his pockets, though. He tried to push them away—

  He got boxed so hard on the ear that he almost fell down again. Staggered, he turned, looked up, saw one of the corporate guards from the luggage reclaim ramp looming over him, rifle in one hand, the last few of von Harrer’s francs stuck in the other. There was resentment in the Spaniard’s eyes, as if he’d been cheated out of a promised reward: his eyes narrow, the Company guard jammed the money in his own pockets, and angled the Lee-Enfield so as to be able to work its safety. Conrad tried to reel back up, realized he was too dazed and weak to fight, too disoriented to run, that only if he bought some time would he be able to—

  And then, as if some demon put on his body like a suit of clothes, Conrad was on his feet, closing with the Spaniard. This time, the effect of the Cleaner was not discernible as a descent into sociopathia: suddenly, it snapped on throughout him, his body instantly primed as if it had been an electric engine responding to the throw of a switch.

  The Spaniard had considerable reflexes of his own, though; hopping backward, he brought up his now-readied rifle—which Conrad swatted so hard that it flew aside and clattered against the other wall. But the rifle had intercepted the blow intended for the Spaniard himself—who, back-stepping further, unsheathed a dagger so long as to almost qualify as a short sword. Undaunted, Conrad moved directly toward him, calculating that if he struck quickly, he might kill the Spaniard before taking more than one stab to his abdomen or chest. With any luck, he might live—

  But then the Spaniard’s combat-eager grin became wide-eyed surprise, and he gagged, once. As he looked down, blood stained the front of his shirt—just before he toppled over, revealing a slender-hilted knife protruding from his back and a slender Martian stevedore standing behind him.

  With the threat of immediate combat diminishing, the murderous demon inside of Conrad had half-shrugged its way out of his body. He sagged unsteadily against the wall. “Thank you. I am grateful for your—”

  “I do not care about you,” the Martian said sharply as he shrugged out of the over-large stevedore’s coveralls. “I must find your luggage. Where did they take it?”

  “You want—my luggage? For the guns?”

  “No, the book. Where is the book?”

  With nothing to his name, Conrad realized that he now had exactly one thing left to him of any value, that might help him improve his unpromising odds of survival: he had something this Martian wanted. “If you want to know how to find the book, you’re going to have to help me.”

  The Martian stared at him narrowly through thin, wide-set eyes, and his ears actually swiveled forward, like those of a suddenly alert fox. Except the ears were taller, thinner, and quite hairless. “You do not seem to be in a position to make demands.”

  “You do not seem to know where the book is—or how to get it.”

  The Martian considered. “Your help is merely a convenience. I saw the men who seized you. I can find them again without you.”

  “If you were sure of that, you wouldn’t have come back here to rescue me.” And then Conrad understood. “No, you already looked in my luggage. But you couldn’t find it. So when the sergeant split off with the other guard, you could only choose to follow one target: him, or the one who was dragging me off to rob in an isolated spot. And you chose me. Because even once you relocate my luggage, you still need me.”

  The Martian—who wore what looked like a stiff leather jerkin under a knee-length frock joined to a traveling cape—frowned. “I had only a moment to go through your goods. If I had more time, I am quite certain I could have—”

  “But you didn’t have the time, and you didn’t find it. Meaning there’s only one question that matters: how long are you going to argue about whether you will agree to help me or not? Which is to say, how long a head start to you want to give the bastards who robbed me?”

  The Martian closed his eyes, sighed, his ears rotating away. “Very well, I will help you.”

  “For as long as I require it.”

  “What? I am not about to become a life-bondsman to a human, to a Pink—”

  “I mean, you will help me until you—until we—have delivered the book to whomever you’re fetching it for.”

  The Martian’s ears rotated forward again, and his eyes narrowed. “I am not delivering it to anyone. I work for myself.”

  “Nonsense. The book is the key to power—great power. But only in the hands of captains or kings. Your hands are not the ones that are ready to wield it. Yours are the hands that have been sent to get it.”

  The Martian retrieved his dagger from the Spaniard’s back, considered Conrad with a glimmer of genuine interest. “How do you know this?”

  “Your mission—to find and steal a book, undetected if possible—is a job for a thief. If this book were a gem, perhaps I would not be so sure you were not working for yourself. That is the kind of treasure that a single, knowledgeable thief can sell to the right persons who do their business in the right shadows. But this book is not a treasure in the usual, monetary sense of the word. I saw the lust in the eyes of men holding it, men who had just enough power and ambition to know what it was worth to a person who truly had the high position and influence to be able to afford—and wield—the knowledge contained in it. But such persons, who understand what the book is and to whom it is so valuable, are no longer persons who undertake tasks of—acquisition—themselves. They are the brains that plan and decide. And you—you are one of their deft hands.” Half of Conrad’s confident assertions had been, of course, sheer guesswork, but the Martian’s body language had sent faint, ongoing confirmations of his conjectures almost as clearly as a human’s would have.

  The Martian sheathed his dagger, picked up the Company trooper’s rifle, handed it to Conrad. “Very well, I will help you. But it is not enough that you guide me to the book and tell me where it is. You must help me get it. And you do seem to have recovered enough now to be helpful.” He studied Conrad more closely, scanning his eyes and, it seemed, the sides of his neck. “So, you were given the tainted mloolj.” He sidled back along the wall to where the alley opened into a small lane. “We were not sure if those reports were true.”

  “Reports? What reports?” asked Conrad as he pocketed the Company soldier’s ammunition. “And made to whom? Who is ‘we’?”

  The Martian led the way out of the alley, detaching and handing his cape back to Conrad. “Do you always ask so many questions, Conrad of the House of von Harrer? An answer to any of the ones you just asked might well mark you for death, for knowing too much.”

  “At the risk of asking another such dangerous question, how is it that you know my name, as well?”

  “It stands to reason, does it not, that if we know you may have smoked the tainted mloolj, that we would at least know your name as well?”

  “That answer is no answer: it merely explains why knowing one thing makes it likely you would know another. It does not tell me how you know any of them.”

  The Martian smiled. “You are not easily distracted, Pink.”

  “Not even by veiled compliments. But since you are obviously not going to share how you know my name or anything else about me, then at least tell me what I may call you.”

  “That request might be the most dangerous of all, since I take any steps necessary to ensure that my deeds remain anonymous.”

  Conrad wrapped the cape around the Enfield. “Perhaps the drug—this mloolj—has made me incautious.”

  In front of him, the Martian’s ears seemed to become a bit more erect. “Hzzzhhh. You remind me of a Pinker animal I have seen.”

  “What is a Pinker?”

  “You. An Earthman. You are pink. Even those of you who are not pink on the face
still have pink on parts of your body. A most unusual color.”

  “Oh. And this animal that I remind you of?”

  “I believe you call it a ‘cat.’ A most cautious creature—and yet, it cannot suppress its curiosity.” He changed his posture; he was slightly stooped now. As he drew closer to Conrad, his head tilted deferentially. Suddenly, he appeared to be nothing more than a spare-framed native guide and footman. “You are like that animal, that cat, I think. You may be cautious, but your curiosity may kill you yet.”

  “Well, I just hope I have all its lives.”

  “All its—?”

  “There is an old saying, that cats have nine lives.”

  “I have observed that they always land on their feet, yes.” He studied Conrad again as they emerged onto a street that paralleled the aerostation at a distance. “Perhaps another way in which you are similar. We shall see. And if you do not do so openly, you may call me Szurthål Hyshmrua. Now let us make haste.”

  * * *

  Szurthål was, naturally enough, singularly adept at moving through the streets swiftly and unobtrusively. But his instinct about where the luggage had gone was entirely incorrect. When he nodded his head in the direction of the nearest Company patrol station, Conrad shook his head. “No, not there.”

  “No? You were arrested, and your goods were seized.”