Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy (18 page)

“More than half. Many of the Quiff died, and
many of Miklos’s people. He’s attending to their burial now, in the
snow.”

“Take me to him.”

I tried to rise, but once more found myself
in a faint.

When I woke up it was darker, as if the
sun had set above us, but just as cold.

I
n the morning I
could sit up. Our little cave seemed to spin around me, but if I
kept very still everything steadied, and I could speak.

I was warm now – too warm – and threw off
some of the cloaks and blankets which had been covering me. Darwin
was asleep at my feet, looking very young in his slumber, his hand
on his sword which lay next to him. He looked cold, and I covered
him.

Slowly swiveling around, I surveyed the
space, and saw that it was an ice cave with an unseen opening
behind us. I could hear low talk and assumed it was guarded by at
least two of our soldiers. I wanted very badly to climb out into
the sunlight, but was unable to stand up.

After a while I gave up, and curled
down next to my husband, letting sleep take me once more.

W
hen I woke Darwin
was gone, but I heard voices closer, and spied two soldiers bearing
a tray making their way down the long grade to where I sat.

One of them raised a hand in greeting – and
at that moment the roof above him collapsed. A sheet of white came
down on the two felines, whose screams were cut off as if with a
knife.

Forgetting my disability I rose and hobbled
to the spot where a new wall of snow and ice blocked the way. I
called out but was met with only silence.

Darwin appeared behind me.

“Merciful Great One!” he cried.

“The poor fellows who were caught in this.
Can they dig us out?”

“It would take days, perhaps a week or
longer. This new material will be hard as rock before you know
it.”

I looked at him for an alternative.

“We have a little food, and water will be no
problem. I’ve surveyed this passage for a good couple miles, and it
continues downward – but there may be a side passage that leads us
out. It’s better than sitting here and waiting for starvation and
cold to claim us.”

“All right.”

“How do you feel?”

“Woozy, but much better.”

“Then we’ll make a go of it.”

We returned to our sleeping place, and Darwin
made an inventory. “Two swords, two daggers, a bit of hardtack, a
box of matches, an oil lamp. I suggest we both wrap ourselves with
as many layers of clothing and blankets as we can. It may warm us
too much now, but we may need them later.”

We did so, and then wasted no time, heading
into the cave which sloped down into the bowels of an unknown
world.

E
ver so gradually we
lost our light, as the mass of ice above us filtered the sun away.
And then darkness fell, making our blackness utter. Darwin lit the
lamp, and it threw eerie blue ice shadows on the walls.

After a while I began to feel as if we had
made no progress. Our little area of illumination never changed:
the same white ice walls, ceiling and floor. Though we walked, I
was beset with the illusion that we were walking in place.

“I must rest,” I said, the pain in my head
finally overcoming me. I fell to the floor and Darwin attended
me.

“Your bump is less noticeable,” he said,
gently probing the wound.

“It feels as though someone was rhythmically
beating me with a closed fist,” I said, feeling suddenly faint.

He put water to my lips from his canteen.

“Then we’ll rest here for the night.”

“How will you know when it’s day?” I asked,
and he laughed.

“We won’t,” he said, “but we’ll guess.”

And then he must have lain me gently down,
for when I awoke I was swaddled in blankets on the floor of the ice
tunnel.

I sat up, glad to see that the pounding in my
head was gone, and that I could move my head without a stab of pain
shooting through it. The lamp had been turned low. Darwin’s even
sleeping breath marked the only sound.

And yet–

There was another sound, very faint, and very
far away. Another kind of breathing, it sounded like, but so light
that it might almost be an illusion.

I thought of all the fairy tales I’d heard
about mythical ice monsters, huge horrid white worms that lay in
the bowels of the ice caps sucking intruders into their horrid
round mouths and mashing them with row on row of tiny pure white
teeth–

I had managed to frighten myself, and
sat most of the rest of the night in self vigil, listening to that
ever so faint breathing, and letting my imagination run riot.

W
hen Darwin woke (it
was morning, because a whisper of light from above illumined the
walls light blue around us) he stretched contentedly and then
studied my face.

“You look like you haven’t slept at all!” he
remarked.

“Very little.”

“Is it your head–?”

“My head is fine, now.” I thought of telling
him of my night worries, but thought better of it.

Besides, I could hear nothing now in the
long, endless stretch of tunnel that lay ahead of us.

“Shall we march?” Darwin said, offering me a
bit of hardtack, which I gratefully accepted.

I stood up, and we gathered our meager
things, and we walked.

L
ater in the day,
when the walls had darkened for good, the angle of our descent
began to sharply increase. Darwin turned up the lamp, trying to
peer into the distance, as our feet began to slip on the ice,
drawing us down.

“I have an idea,” he said. He peeled from
each of us a blanket and laid it on the ground. “Sit on this,” he
explained, “and we’ll slide down. It’s too steep to walk. If you
start to go too fast, just dig your boots into the ice to slow
yourself down.”

“Like a kit’s sleigh!” I said, and he
laughed.

“Exactly.”

But as with all good plans, the execution did
not match the inspiration. As soon as we sat down on our respective
blankets we began to slide forward, at first at a manageable pace,
but then faster and faster. I tried to dig my boots into the ice to
either side of the cloth but the slope was now so severe that there
was no stopping. With or without blanket we were going down this
slide, with no slow-up. Darwin, holding the oil lamp high, raced
past me, peering intently into the gloom ahead. With no choice I
followed him, my stomach lurching. There was a turn to the left,
another to the right and then we straightened out again.

And then, suddenly, the ride was over and we
slowed to a halt as the pitch of the tunnel leveled out and became
flat.

Darwin stood up and gave a sigh of relief.
“Are you all right?”

I could not help but laugh. “That was quite a
ride!”

And then my laugh died in my throat –
because, as plain as day, I heard the breathing sound I had heard
the night before, only now much steadier and much louder.

“You hear that?” I whispered, but Darwin had
already heard, and was holding the lamp out to the right, moving
slowly down the passageway.

He made a silent motion for me to follow, and
I gathered up my blanket and did so.

Now there was light ahead of us, pulsing and
faint. The tunnel bent slightly to the right, and widened. The
light grew slowly stronger, and now the breathing became a steady
pulse – chuff, chuff – that grew.

“That’s not a white worm,” I said out loud,
in relief, for the sound was too mechanical and unnatural.

“A what?” Darwin asked, looking at me with a
frown.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just the fairy tale that
kept me awake last night.”

He shook his head and walked forward.

The slight curve to the right continued, and
now the light grew brighter ahead of us. Darwin doused our
lamp.

CHUFFFF-CHUFFFF

We passed an artificial barrier from white
ice to hard, white, artificial floor.

Our boots echoed on the spotless tile of an
anteroom, and ahead of us were two tall, metallic silver doors.

I put my paw on one of the doors and held my
breath.

Beside me, Darwin drew his sword.

“Go ahead,” he said, nodding.

I pushed at the door, and it opened –

– but not into the bright cave of machines
and wonders I had expected. The room within was dimly lit and not
large. If fact, it reminded me of...

An old familiar knot formed in my stomach,
and I drew back.

“What’s wrong?”

“My...grandmother and father. This
room...”

“It can’t be the same place.”

In the middle of the room was a familiar
dais, with a not quite empty throne-like chair upon it.

As we watched a vague form took shape, a
ghostly violet image that grew and filled in...

“I must go,” I choked, not able to face One
or Two again, my dead relatives, my grandmother Haydn or father
Sebastian was more drawn back to life from the realm beyond.

I turned, but Darwin blocked my way. His
sword was at his side. “Turn and look,” he said gently, taking hold
of me and forcing me around.

I turned, and looked at the shaped form on
the chair on the dais.

My breath turned to a gasp in my throat.

“An Old One!” I whispered.

I
t was, indeed, an
Old One that Darwin and I beheld. There could be no doubt. The
stature – more than a foot taller than either my husband or I – the
naked facial features, a flaxen, limp mane of hair covering only
the top of the head and drawn down over the low-placed ears, the
long limbs, skinny paws and overly elongated fingers and blunt
claws – this could be nothing less than one of our mysterious,
near-mythical ancestors come back to life.

The figure sat wan and tired-looking, its
blinking gaze unfocused. It was still solidifying, already more
solid than my grandmother or father had ever been, not a blue ghost
but an almost solid thing. It wore a strangely shaped tunic and
sandals on its overlarge feet; the toes, again, were elongated and
blunt-clawed, altogether alien.

And the room was brightening, too, the
dimness dissipating, making the specter in front of us less
ghostly. Darwin sheathed his sword and, at the sound, the Old One
turned its wizened head slowly in our direction.

“You have come to see me?” it said, its voice
weak and broken by static, but decidedly female.

Its eyes were also strange, large but sunken,
pupil and iris malformed compared to a feline eye.

The Old One blinked, and seemed to take on
even more form.

“Yes?” she said, her voice louder,
stronger.

We stepped forward, and I said, “I am Queen
Clara of Mars.”

“Indeed?” Now the Old One took a deep breath,
which seemed to refresh her. She looked down at me with a more
piercing gaze.

“You are a feline!”

“Of course.”

“I am told...” She held up a long digit, for
silence, and closed her eyes. “My word...” she breathed.

She opened her eyes again and regarded us. “I
am told that I have been in stasis for almost one and three quarter
million years.”

“To us, the Old Ones are nothing but a fossil
record,” I stated.

“Indeed.” Again she closed her eyes and
breathed deep. “This comes as a bit of an adjustment. I certainly
did not plan on staying ‘in the bin’ for so long – nor waking up
to...another species.”

She regarded us closely, and I became
uncomfortable at her stone-like gaze.

“Are there none at all like me then?”

“You are the first live Old One who has ever
been seen by a feline.”

“‘Live,’” she said, issuing something like a
chuckle, “is a relative word. Reconstituted, more like. I stayed
behind by my own choice, but I thought they would return.”

I must have looked at her quizzically, for
she continued, in a tone as if she did not quite believe it
herself, “They all went back to Earth. The terraforming went fine,
and for hundreds of years, even after the time of the Machine
Master and the wars among the Five Worlds, there were colonies on
Mars – but then, when Earth was once more inhabitable and the wars
ended...”

She shrugged, as if I would understand, and
when I said nothing she leaned forward in her chair and put her
huge hands on her knees.

“Don’t you understand?” she said. “You were
left behind. There was nothing on Mars when we came, and we made it
habitable and brought the things we knew and loved from home.

“Cats, for instance. Our pets.”

I drew myself up with as much pride as I
could. “Do you mean to tell me we were hauled here, like so much
cattle?”

“As I said, pets, my...” She thought better
of what she was going to say, and addressed me instead as, “Your
majesty.”

I was filled with indignation and rage, but,
unaccountably, Darwin beside me was holding his sides and laughing.
The Old One had begun to laugh, too.

“You find this humorous?” I shouted in the
little room, but my self-important rage seemed out of place and was
drowned out by the laughter around me.

The Old One held her hands out in
supplication, but she was still chuckling.

“Doesn’t it make sense, Clara?” Darwin said.
“Our own fossil record, the growth from dog-size to our present
stature, Copernicus’ paper...”

“I’m afraid it’s true, your majesty.” She
gave another laugh. “If it makes you feel better, my own kind
developed from monkeys! It is the natural way of things.”

It was my turn to laugh, and Darwin joined
me.

“It is the natural way of things,” the Old
One said. “But still, to see two felines fully developed into
sentient creatures. You were left behind when men returned to
Earth, and now, well, now you have inherited a world...”

She shook her head.