Champion of Mars (3 page)

“What about my bags?”

“Open tops.” Three small, six-wheeled drone trucks sat on the hard standing of the rover parking bay by their garage. They came to life, and trundled in single file to the rear of the rover. The cargo hatch folded up, and a conveyor and arm deployed and started to load crates onto the trucks, the Marsform logo on every one. “If there weren’t so many supplies in the rover today, we could ride them up, but we will have to walk.”

They walked up a track where the rocks had been cleared. Mesh had been laid down to prevent the road rutting, lights and positional beacons delimiting its edges. The android moved effortlessly, Stulynov bounded along efficiently if inelegantly. Holland lumbered hopelessly behind. Every step he took seemed to wrongfoot him, each one seemed to threaten a fall and a smashed faceplate. He had yet to adjust to the gravity, thirty-eight per cent of Earth’s. He felt insubstantial, as if he’d blow away in the wind, and he sweated because of it.

At the camp, they stopped by one of the larger domes’ porches, a long, flexible tunnel extending out some way from the dome wall. Stulynov produced a stiff brush from a box on the outside. They took it in turns to swipe the worst of the dust off each other and keyed the door open.

“At least this is not so bad as the dust on the Moon, eh?” said Stulynow.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Holland.

“Lunar regolith is much finer, it fouls pretty much everything up within minutes, gives a nasty rash if it touches the skin. I was there for a while at the pole. Martian dust is less of a problem. Here is like returning home from the beach, is annoying, but not too much danger.” He paused. “Although some of the subtypes are very fine, and in others the oxidants react violently with water. That’s more an issue in the lowlands, not up here.”

They passed into the airlock. A brisk blast of air blew more of the dust away. From a locker in the wall, Stulynow brought out a couple of vacuum cleaners. They used them on each other and passed into a suiting room lined with lockers – Holland noticed one with his name on it, the sticky label clean and adhered fully to the plastic, unlike the others.

Great,
he thought,
more evidence of my shiny newbie status.

They discarded their environment suits, and the android stowed them with rigid efficiency while Stulynow explained how to get all the bulky apparatus into the locker properly. Only then could they proceed into the tent.

The dome was full of racks of equipment, crates of parts and a small, scrupulously maintained fabricator, a pallet of feedstocks standing by it. One wall was flattened, filled by a large window looking on to what Holland figured was Mission Control. A couple of people in there glanced up at them and waved. Three further concertina tunnels led off from the rear of the dome, spaced at irregular intervals. Signs marked them off as ‘Quarters,’ ‘Science’ and ‘Cavern Access.’ From the middle tunnel came a man in pale grey-blue Marsform overalls. Pretty much all the colonists wore them. Like Stulynow and Holland, his name was embroidered on his left breast: Maguire.

Maguire emanated energy bordering on the irritating, a trait Holland remembered well, and he was practically buzzing with it now, his excitement at seeing his old friend plastered across his face in the form of a huge smile. “Hey! Holly! Great to see you,” he said, his Irish accent as strong as ever. He took Holland’s hand and pumped, grasping his forearm as he did so. “You well?”

“I’m fine, fine, Dave, it’s good to see you too.”

“You look tired. The journey take it out of you? It can take a while to adjust. Still, you’ll soon be over it, very soon! I’m glad you decided to join us at last, we’ve got new guys coming in all the time, but wow, I’ve been reading your work from back home and I just know you’re going to be a real asset here. I hope our big Russian here has been good to you, so he has.”

“My mother was a Buryat,” said Stulynow dourly.

“You have, haven’t you Stuly?” said Maguire.

Stulynow scowled. His heavy face was particularly suited to it. “I try my best. He doesn’t like the android much. You should have told me he was a Frankenphobe.”

“Oh Stuly, no need to be like that! Don’t tease him, he’s new here.”

Stulynow did not look like he was teasing.

“Give him a chance to settle in!” Maguire’s smile remained, but his eyes radiated concern. “I’ll tell you what, Stuly, why don’t you get on, I’ll show Holly here to his room. We’ve got plenty of catching up to do.”

“Sure,” said Stulynow. “See you tomorrow.”

“We saved you some dinner!” called Maguire after the Russian.

Together they gathered Holland’s bags from the cargo drones. The android kept a discreet distance. When Stulynow had gone, Maguire turned to Holland.

“I am so sorry, I should’ve thought to have the android stay here, Holly.” He looked mortified. “She requested we send her sheath out, I think she gets bored.”

“Stulynow told me it was standard practice,” said Holland.

“Yes, well, not usually on the cargo runs, only on long-range scouting missions. Stulynow is not above the odd little white lie. He prefers the simple explanations to longer ones. You’ll get to know that about him; hell, you’ll get to know everyone very well. One of the advantages – or is it a drawback? I can never quite decide – of working on such a small team.”

There we go. He’s calling it ‘her,’ too
, thought Holland. The old Maguire would never have done so. Still, he couldn’t blame him. It was hard not to impart humanity to the machines. Holland had seen the other side of them; he never would.

“What was I thinking? Too much on, I suppose. Look Holly, I am sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, Dave, I work with AIs all the time, it’s unavoidable. I don’t feel comfortable round them after... well. But I can and do work with them. Marsform would never let me up here if I had a full-blown aversion to them.”

Maguire shook his head. “I’m not surprised. It’s an unforgivable lapse on my part. She asked to go, I said yes, I wasn’t thinking. I think she wanted to meet you. Honestly, she’s a doll. Might do you some good to work with her.”

“Seriously, forget it,” Holland paused. “Dave... No one else knows, do they? Only I like to know what I’m getting into, and Marsform have been pretty good about keeping it confidential...”

“Worried I might let something slip?” Maguire’s good humour returned. “I haven’t said a word. I might be an Irish gobshite, but I’m not totally insensitive.”

Holland blew out his cheeks and looked around. His eyes felt scratchy, like he was about to cry, probably the journey. Arrivals were always something of an anticlimax, and he felt off balance. “Thanks. The last thing I want is a load of sympathy, you can take only so much. I came up here to get away from it, the little looks and words behind my back. Kindness can drive you crazy.”

“I’ll keep it to myself.”

“Thanks. It’s hard enough to fit in. The gravity, the canned air, this –” he gestured to his neck interface, the gateway to his company cranial augmentation. He still hadn’t signed the soul capture release form, he remembered. It was the one thing he wasn’t happy about. Allowing them to pattern his mind, in order to digitally resurrect him should he die, seemed wrong. He didn’t want to be turned, to all intents and purposes, into an AI should he expire, but Marsform insisted on the capture just in case. The form sat in his mem-mail inbox, redly impatient. At least they hadn’t forced a full mentaug on him; he should be thankful for that.

“You’re not thinking you made a mistake, are you, Holly?” Maguire’s grin broadened. It was infectious; Holland found himself returning it.

Maguire pointed at him. “Ha! I knew it. Holland, everybody thinks they made a mistake when they get here. You’ll get over it, we all do. Now come on.” He hefted one of Holland’s bags onto his shoulder. “I’ll show you your room, you’re in delta four. Not much, but I promise you won’t be spending much time in it; we’re busy here. I’ve saved you some food. You missed group dinner. We insist on that here, so that we don’t descend into barbarism. After you’ve eaten, let’s go have a little post-dinner drinky in my office.” He gave a conspiratorial wink. “There are some advantages to being the station personnel manager.”

H
OLLAND’S ACCOMMODATION WAS
a more of a cell than a room, small and austere. The LEDs on his workstation flooded it with sharp green light. He’d wished he’d followed Maguire’s advice and taped over them. He resolved to do it tomorrow, but for the moment he lay trapped in his bunk by exhaustion.

He lay there for what felt like hours, his head fuzzy from the whisky, until he sank into the spaces in between waking and sleep where the subconscious mind briefly reveals itself.

He found himself at the bottom of a deep, electric-green sea, with a bed of red sand and olive rock. He threshed against it, struggling to breathe. The water held little resistance; he overbalanced, falling painfully slowly. The sand sucked at him, and he began to sink. Holland panicked and struggled, but he could not break free. He held his breath, but as the sand reached his eyes he was forced to release it. The exhaled air went rushing upwards in silvery bubbles through an ocean of red dust. He tried to scream, but the ocean was cold and thin and froze his lungs. His chest erupted with a pain that expanded to fill the dark above him.

Sand clogged his eyes and his mouth. Something tickled in the hole they’d made in his neck, the pathway to his nervous system. As he began to black out, he felt his mind rush toward the interface port like water circling a plughole.

Holland awoke with a jolt, clutching at his chest. He was dehydrated and cold, sweating in spite of it, his bedclothes a tangled heap on the floor. He blinked, his eyes sore with a grittiness he hadn’t been able to shake since he’d arrived on the planet. One eyelid stuck painfully to his eye, tears flooding it. He blinked rapidly. Something was wrong.

The door was open, the harsh yellow light a dagger-slash across the room.

In the frame, its plastic limbs highlighted in delicate arcs of yellow and green, stood the android. Holland stared at it mutely.

To his shame he froze, stopped dead, just like he did the last time.

The robot’s hand rose. Gripped between rubber fingertips was his photograph. Him and the boy, and his wife. It ran through its five seconds of footage, the three of them, laughing and happy. The thing’s fingers obscured his boy’s face as he ran toward the camera.

He remembered other fingers, slick with blood.

Anger rose in him, pushing aside his fear. He prepared to fight, to fight the way he should have done then. He stood.

“Wait.” The android spoke with a husky female voice, entirely at odds with its alien appearance. “I apologise for disturbing you. I did not wish to speak in front of the others, for the knowledge I possess is drawn from the confidential section of your file, and now, at this time, is the best opportunity for me to speak with you unobserved.

“Firstly, I wish to say that what occurred to you was deeply regrettable. The Class Five was an unstable product that should never have been released onto the open market. I wish to reassure you that I mean you no harm. That I
cannot
mean you harm. I am an evolved Class Three. I am proven safe. I alone have logged over twenty-four thousand hours of interaction with human beings. Feedback has never been less than exemplary. My AI class has amassed seven thousand, eight hundred man-years of interaction with the human race without incident. My subclass is designed specifically for planetary exploration, and has been rigorously tested.”

Holland had to force himself to speak. “What do you want?”

“I wish to reassure you,” it repeated the phrase, note and cadence exactly the same. “I hope we might become friends.”

“Put the photograph down and get out,” Holland said, his words strangled. Spittle sprang from his lips. “How dare you come in here? Get out!”

For a moment the android stood still, so still it appeared inactive. “As you wish,” it said dispassionately. The android placed the photograph on the pullout table by the bed. Holland followed the machine’s movements and noticed the table’s other contents – watch, water bottle and phone – scattered across the floor. He stared at them numbly.

“I am sorry for what occurred, truly I am,” the machine said. She,
it,
left.

He waited for long minutes for the adrenaline to recede and his body to stop trembling before he moved. He replaced his things on the table and sucked water from the bottle until it crumpled. He went to the door and looked up and down the corridor; it was empty, the station quiet but for the hum of its idiot parts, sustaining life. He shut the door and got back into bed.

Holland lay staring at the wall, and the knowledge that Mars’ near-airlessness was just on the other side of pressed-earth bricks and a layer of dirt was suddenly terrifying. The sensation he had felt in his dream came back to him: the weight of nothing, waiting to drown him.

Somehow, eventually, sleep stole over him.

CHAPTER THREE

The Death of the Spirefather of Olm

T
HE WALL A
few hundred metres to the left of the main gates of Olm bubbles, and with a rending screech, the skin of it sloughs away, molten marrow gushing from its core.

A breach, forty lengths or more wide, opens. A section of the city shield above it, already failing under the sun cannon’s screaming bombardment, flickers out.

“The walls are down. The walls are down.” The voice of Kemiímseet’s Decarch general echoes into the mind of every man and machine in the Imperial Army. Battleplans flash, vivid as dreams, into their consciousnesses, playing scenarios tailored to each man that are hard to tell apart from memories. Every one of them knows what they are to do, and whether they are to live or die. They go to their allotted task without hesitation; the course of fate can be resisted only by the truly exceptional. This is the Martian way.

Like a flock of birds changing direction in flight, the pattern of the battle shifts. Sun cannon concentrate their fire onto two more sections of the wall that are close to collapse. The Second World is in uproar as the spirits within Olm marshall their forces to the breach.