Champion of Mars (14 page)

“It was my only chance, you know,” he said. His voice crackled with emotion, but he no longer cared. He was looking at his son! “But I am so glad.”

“Yes, I saw from your files. Sterile. So many born here are.”

“The moon will stop that, I am sure.”

“Perhaps,” said Sister Artema. “We hope. The high levels of sterility here do leave an opportunity for us and our creed. For those who have gone before to live again is all we wish to achieve. The current circumstances create a happy synergy for us. There are many who wish to become parents, but who cannot, by the normal method.”

Arturo nodded. “It is an honour to be welcoming someone back. Especially here, so many heroes. Big hearts and big souls to make a world. But,” he had a thought. “Surely, then, you oppose the raising of Heimark’s Moon?”

The sister shook her perfect head. Her hair was meticulously presented, and not in a manner that suggested self-denial. But then, what could be more natural, more animal than to wish for survival and propagation? Perhaps that lay at the heart of this odd religion.

“Of course not,” she said. “All lives bring with them new subjective interpretations of creation. We simply wish to preserve those which have gone before. It is through technologically-aided reincarnation that we may all grow closer to God.”

Ah, yes, the
God
word. So they
were
religious, and properly so.

The sister looked up at him. “An unfashionable idea, God. Do not be worried. We do not demand a belief in Him in our parents. We believe that successive lifetimes will bring the realisation of His existence to our charges without us making a big fuss about it. We are happy to bring joy to all with reborn life. Now...” She breathed out meaningfully. A change in subject was coming. “You are aware of the additional responsibilities that adopting one of our children can bring?”

“Naturally,” said Arturo. “Your induction programme and selection process was most thorough.” And it was.

“It behoves me to repeat some of it here. You perhaps initially thought that having a pre-life baby may be easier in some regards?”

“Well, yes, before the induction. But not now,” he added hurriedly. “I feel well-educated on the matter.”

She did not appear to hear this last part, but continued to deliver some oft-repeated speech. “In some ways having a pre-life child is easier, but in others it is not. It will, of course, be their choice if they come back to the institute to relearn their past, but even if they decide against recollection, memories from their past life – or
lives
by now; we have some children on their third and fourth – can intrude into their current existence. As this happens mostly around adolescence, well, I needn’t say that this can make things a little trickier than with a nature-born child, and it is already a tricky time.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. A fresh feeling of worry nibbled at him, although not enough to dampen his sense of excitement.

He’d spent so long decorating the nursery – it was horrendously expensive, so little was manufactured on Mars – and for the first time in his life he’d begun to understand how limited fabrication units could be.

The sister continued. “The child may well carry over certain skills and capabilities from his earlier existence. He can be quicker to language, even languages that you yourself might not teach him, and certain things, toilet training, for example, can be much easier.”

“I see,” he said gravely, although he had known this ever since the first time he’d gone into the Library and looked at adopting a pre-lifer. He was worried he had given the wrong impression. If waiting for hours had been some kind of test, then what could this be? He had to be alert. He would make a good father, he knew he would. He didn’t want to lose it, at this last of all hurdles. “I really believe in what you are doing here,” he said. “And,” he added in a small voice. “I hope that someone might do the same for me once I am gone and passed.”

“Oh, everyone who wishes it gets another chance from the re-life programme; as many as they want. That is our founder’s gift to the people of Mars. One thing that is readily available is storage, after all. He didn’t like post-mortem simulations, you know. Or rather, he thought they missed something from the human experience.”

“The being human part?” Arturo risked.

The sister laughed a little, a sound like angels ringing tiny bells. Arturo’s knees wobbled. “Pimsims do not offer the same prospect for growth as a re-lifing,” she said. “Spiritual or otherwise. No matter the underlying programming on a Pimsim, it is not the same as living in a breathing, feeling,
mortal
human body. Our founder was also adamant on the inclusion of the new DNA in each re-lifed child. A remarkable man.”

“Yes,” agreed Arturo, for what else should he do? “Will you provide the boy with a companion when the time comes, or will I have to advertise for one?”

“Ah,” she said. Arturo did not like this
ah
. “Something we do not go into great detail in our literature and programme is that many of our pre-lifers are born with companions.”

“Born with them?” This was not right. A child only received a companion at age six.

“Born with them. Companions can become doggedly attached to their human counterparts. Here we see often that when children are scheduled to be re-lifed, their companions from their prior existences, should they have had them, nearly always arrive and petition to be allowed to rejoin their human counterparts. You know, most companion AI, should their human companion decease, they will not take another.”

Arturo, who had been the first in his family to adopt the Martian custom of taking a companion AI, was vaguely aware of that, and murmured something to that effect.

“Of course,” she proceeded diplomatically, “some of these AI can be rather... individual.”

Again Arturo’s heart leaped. Was this woman attempting to kill him with wave after wave of potentially terrible news?

“Some we have to turn away. I am sure you are aware of the current debate in the Chamber; that some AI are accruing too many sub-personalities. It is their way of changing, I suppose, and it surely leads to great personal growth, but some of them are a little unstable to be the companion to a child. After all, children do regard AI companions as spiritual or supernatural mentors, until they are old enough to know better.”

“It is their right; they are free to do as they choose,” said Arturo. Was this another test? His mouth was dry. Or could the AI he’d be adopting with his son be some kind of ancient monster? It was only five centuries since they were created, the AI, but their evolution had been terrifyingly swift.

“I mention this only as the AI who will join with your son is an old one, and influential in her way. She has agreed to wait until his sixth birthday before joining him, although she will be watching, of that you can be sure. However, I think you will find her accommodating.”

“You cannot tell me who my boy was?”

“I cannot,” she said. “You did pay attention. It is up to you to mould who he will be, and one eye on the past at this time is potentially damaging to that aim.”

“Can you, then, tell me the name of his companion?”

“I cannot.”

Arturo felt a rush of relief. It was better that way.

They went then, and processed his paperwork, although no paper was involved. “Do you have a name?” he was asked.

And he did, Joachim, a name he’d chosen a long time ago. It felt decidedly strange to be using it in relation to an actual person, rather than a concept. He felt the giddy rush of life changing under his feet once more.

In the morning, Arturo was given Joachim and escorted to the door. As he held the small infant in his arms, swaddled in its radiation blanket, he felt bewildered. They were allowing him to be a father, and this struck him as some mistake. Surely he wasn’t yet ready, or suitable.

His own companion returned to him and told him that of course he would be a good father, that he was there to help, and that a great many fathers had felt that way down the ages. What it didn’t do was voice its opinion that Arturo was something of an idiot, for it knew very well who the boy’s companion was, and that she was of some note.

Arturo, fortified by this pep talk, held his chin high, clutched his much-longed-for son to his chest, and strode to where a rank of drone taxis waited to take visitors to the institute home.

Overhead, the sky echoed to the sound of sonic booms, spacecraft coming and going through the atmosphere to Heimark’s Moon.

CHAPTER NINE

The Emperor of Mars

T
HE FLITTER FLIES
above the Cataracts Major and on over the Marrin Lake. They leave the sounds of the city behind one by one, until the whine of the craft’s anti-gravitics and wings competes alone with the wind on the trees and the waves.

The Imperial Palace has many names: the Nuctian Palace, Eternity House, the House of Fate, Golden Mountain, and more besides. It stands on the furthest shore of the lake from the city, its outer bastions extending deep into the milky water. The Imperial Palace overlooks the whole of Kemiímseet and its hinterlands. It sits upon and around a mesa of hard black stone, born of water and fire in the time of Mars’ first life. Atop the rock, grown from it, stands the palace spire, artificial crystals bonded with half-metals and city flesh. Once, I and many others knew how to make such things; now, no one does. A sentinel tower teased up from the rock, the single largest building on Mars, it guards the point where the canyon shatters into the thousand gulleys of the Nuct Lebtuuth and starts its maddening way up to the highlands of the Tertis. The Old Road is the only sure route through this maze; it emerges from the lake and leads eventually to the ruined places around Mulympiu, but it is perilous now, and few go that way. The Tertis is untamed and deadly; beyond it lie the Stone Lands.

The sides of the palace’s topmost levels are fashioned into four great heads representing the Martian male virtues – Wisdom, Might, Virility and Mercy – and for this it is sometimes also called the Four-Faced Palace. The heads look out over chaos and civilisation both, for the palace is the last outpost of civilisation before the dangers of the Nuct and the Tertis, and its appearance fits this purpose well.

The flitter makes for the mouth of Mercy, past giant teeth of pitted steel, and we turn on the spot and descend, coming to rest in a hangar.

The flitter’s hull, still transparent, looks out through the gaping mouth of Mercy onto a world darkening to night, mirror suns casting last red light on the stepped city. Dark is fast descending; the true sun has passed the canyon lip.

The city lights come on. Mercy faces Kemiímseet, a reminder to the inhabitants that they live and breathe only upon the sufferance of the all-powerful Twin Emperor of Mars, though his claim to that title grows ever more tenuous.

The scarabs depart. Presently, Yoechakenon awakens to find the flitter empty but for Andramakenon and Varakanen. The weakness has gone, and Yoechakenon comes to instantly.

“Sir,” says Andramakenon. “The Emperor is ready to see you.” At his words, Yoechakenon’s restraints snake back, become passing ripples on the wall of the flitter, and are gone into their hiding places.

Yoechakenon follows the scarabs down the ramp of the airship and into the main body of the palace. He scrubs the sleep from his eyes with the heels of his bound hands. They walk on polished black stone through great arcades hewn from the living rock of the mesa. These floors shine like mirror suns, inset with priceless chalcedony, malachite, and limestones laid down in seas aeons dry. Fossils lie curled within, remnants of the life that crawled underwater ages before the planet’s desiccation, long before Man roused it from the dust. They pass wonders drawn from all over this galaxy, down arcades too long for the space containing them. They see no other living thing. The Emperor trusts no-one but his sworn guards, and tradition dictates he rule entirely alone.

Through mile-long galleries lined with monumental statues and halls so high their tops are wreathed in clouds we go. There is movement sometimes – barely sentient, low-grade whispers clad in simple sheaths of metal and muscle fibre, patrolling the palace on endless rounds of maintenance, but there is no sign of human occupation here in the upper levels. Everything gleams, polished by slave-whispers, worn smooth by their mindless attention. The palace is ancient and as lifeless as a museum. The statues are bowed by the weight of millennia, the imperishable basalt mocks the impermanence of life, ranked mausolea speak of the inevitability of death. Many men in the Higher Stems of Kemiímseet have their eyes on the Emperor’s throne, and some have done for many lifetimes. Why, I will never fathom. I have seen too often what the office of Emperor does to men and the spirits they bond with. It dries them out and leaves them withered. Mars brooks no single master.

I think on these things. Yoechakenon does not. He does not think on his meeting. He does not worry, nor does he overly care or fret on its outcome. Such feelings as he has of this kind are but the memories of emotion, fear having long been banished from him, along with so much else.

When he does think, it is of revenge.

The two guards lead Yoechakenon to a portal, twenty metres high and decorated with scenes from the life of the one thousand, three hundred and fifty-seventh Emperor, Kastafahirk the Intransigent; three thousand years dead. They stop, and Andramakenon nods to his captive. “We leave you here, Lord. The Emperor awaits you within.”

Yoechakenon dips a shallow bow to each man in turn, and Andramakenon and Varakanen return the gesture and take up station either side of the doors. They swing ponderously open, and Yoechakenon walks through.

He staggers as if struck, a sharp ache spreading across his skull. At first he thinks the pain bracelets have been activated, but the pain fades. With it goes what little noise he can hear from the Great Library. His connection is gone, and he stands utterly alone. Mine also is dampened, although I have not been expelled. I float in a darkness I do not know. I would be frightened, I think, were I alone, but I feel curious. It is a rare occurrence for men to wish to speak to one another without the knowledge of the Great Library. It is not lightly done. So entwined are the people of Mars with the Second World that narcotics are normally taken in places it is lacking to suppress the dark, inner whispers that lurk between men’s thoughts. That it has been done, and that I remain aware, rewrites the probabilities I have calculated for this meeting. I did not foresee this. I feel apprehension.