The Empress of Mars (29 page)

Alice looked startled, then affronted. She shrugged. “Well, so what? I only married him to get myself off this damned rock.”

“Are you saying you don’t love him?”

“Ha! As if. He’s a
man
. They’re all alike underneath.”

“Damn you, Alice! Eli’s a
good
man! Isn’t he kind to you? Isn’t he willing to raise somebody else’s baby as his own, for Goddess’s sake?”

“And he’s welcome to the job,” said Alice sullenly. “I never wanted to get pregnant in the first place. Anyway, wait and see! He’ll probably desert us once we get back on Earth. It won’t matter, though, because I’ll stick him for desertion and get a nice fat settlement. And then, it’ll be
Alice’s
turn to do what
Alice
wants, after a lifetime of being dragged around by other people. I’m not happy here. I’ve never been happy here, and nobody ever cared. If the rest of you want to pretend you’re happy on a lousy airless frozen desert world, you can go right ahead, but not me. I
told
Mum I never wanted to come up here—”

“Shut up!” Rowan clutched her head. “Shut up
shut up!
Bloody hell, I must have heard this same damned speech every day for as long as we’ve been here! Put a sock in it, you—you hypocritical, grasping cow!”

“Oh, so I’m hypocritical?” Alice sneered. “Well, look at you, marrying to get your hands on his family’s money! Which you must have done, because you couldn’t have been so stupidly romantic as to fall in love with him, could you?”

“That’s none of your business!”

“Pft! He’s Dashing Dylan all over again. You couldn’t love him. Not when he’s going to dump you as soon as he gets bored, and run off over the horizon in search of green alien women or whatever it is men want when they go out into Space.” Alice looked balefully at Mr. Crosley and Eddie, who came to the counter to pay for their purchases.

“I was partial to becoming a criminal mastermind, myself,” said Mr. Crosley mildly. “Could you ring up a couple of nougat bars too, ma’am?
And a five-kilo bag of dental casting compound? Here’s the catalogue item number.”

“
You
mind the bloody store for a while,” Rowan muttered to her sister, and stormed off into the back.

The little pale sun sank, threw long purple shadows across the world. The rocks whitened with frost. From his high vantage point Ottorino watched, feeling melancholy. Far out on the rose-colored southern plain, dust storms raged, but here all was silent and somber as the Pyramids in Egypt. He looked east, wondering if he could spot the line of three red mountains, hundreds of kilometers away. He had seen them on maps, and thought how odd it was that they so closely resembled the triad of Earth pyramids: not Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure but Ascraeus, Pavonis and Arsia. New names in an ancient world. And he had come, brash traveler, and won the hand of a sloe-eyed queen here. Would he be able to keep her?

Night fell at length and the stars burned down at him. Ottorino put on the infrared goggles, and waited.

Just as the little quick moon had lifted above the horizon for its first transit, he saw them coming up the mountain. Two, as before. They were carrying something between them.

Ottorino drew out the flare gun and the knife, and set them at hand. He pulled himself into the crevice as far as he could manage, watching, waiting. It took them the better part of an hour to get up to their ledge.

Yes, the same two men, in their expensive gear. They set down what they had been carrying and collapsed on the ledge, stretching out. Everything in their posture and gestures said that they were gasping for air and cursing feebly, but Ottorino could no more hear them than if he’d been on the other side of the world. He focused on the thing they had brought up. It was a cylinder, perhaps two meters long. He thought he might just be able to get his hands around it. What was it for?

Still they lay there, apparently conversing on a private channel through their helmet systems. Now and again one waved his hand to
underscore a point. Gradually they pulled themselves into sitting positions, leaning forward to massage their calves. They got to their feet and jumped in place, exercising to get their chilled blood moving again.

Far down the mountain, on the little strip of cleared terrain by the transport office, a set of lights winked on. Gas or steam vented, and the red lights gave the drifting fogbank a lurid cast. There was a shuttle down there, starting the preliminary procedures for liftoff.

One of the two men noticed it. He pointed. The other turned to stare down the mountain.

Then they moved quickly. The cylinder was lifted, a tripod was folded down from one side and set up. One man took something from a pouch and thrust it down one end of the cylinder. The mortar. It must be a mortar. With practiced speed they aligned it; they must have been up here last night working out the trajectory, and Ottorino realized almost too late that they were aiming their little rocket at the Empress of Mars.

Well-dressed thugs in expensive boots, planning sly murder at a distance. Industrial espionage, as well, but the murder was the main thing. This was part of history too, wasn’t it? Yet it was here and now and the deaths would be real, and the loss unbearable. One little breach in the dome, and the authorities would say it had been a meteorite, perhaps, that had wiped them all out in a moment.

Ottorino grabbed his flare gun, aimed at the mortar and fired, squeezing his eyes shut against the explosion of light that followed. Without waiting, he opened his eyes and grabbed his knife, and dove screaming to the ledge below.

The flare had struck the mortar and knocked it on its side before bouncing over the parapet of rocks to the slope below. There it burned, magnesium-brilliant, backlighting the struggle on the ledge. Ottorino drew on all of his strength and kicked the nearer of the two in the groin, kicking him again in his helmet’s faceplate as he doubled up. He turned to attack the other man but found himself leaped on from behind, a pair of arms going around his neck, a pair of gauntleted hands groping under the edge of his helmet for his mask.

It was weirdly like the bar fight they used to stage for audiences, back in Deadwood Gulch. Ottorino remembered the choreography. He, Tom Jackson, would be jumped by Ernst Hauser playing Hank Turpin, who would yank him backward as he brought up his Bowie knife. And the correct move was to drop to his knees and hurl Ernst forward, so that he went flying over his shoulders, and then to leap on Ernst where he fell sprawling, and draw his own Bowie knife . . .

No retracting blades here. No packet of stage blood, concealed under a calico shirt. The blade of the utility knife went in just above the man’s psuit collar. The blood sprayed out and froze where it landed, glittering like black rubies in the starlight.

Ottorino pushed away from him, gasping, but felt himself tackled from behind again before he could rise on his hands and knees. He rolled over, trying to drag his assailant under him, but the other man compensated and wound up kneeling on his chest.

Ottorino raised his hands, catching the other man by his wrists. Could he break the wrists? Could he shuck off the man’s gauntlets, without which his hands would go instantly numb with cold? Could he at least keep his grip, so that the man would be incapable of reaching for the dropped knife? He couldn’t see his enemy’s expression, he couldn’t hear his voice. There was only the weight on his chest, and the foreshortened looming figure lit by the flare, and the stars staring down at them . . . and still he clenched, clenched, and fought to keep hold while the man twisted his wrists within Ottorino’s grasp.

Then there was another figure outlined against the stars, raising something in its hands. It brought whatever it held down on his assailant’s helmet, with tremendous silent impact.

Ottorino felt the blow too, transmitted through the man’s body. He sucked in a painful breath as the man went limp, slid sideways and fell off him. Ottorino released the wrists at last. He grabbed his knife and pushed himself into a sitting position.

The newcomer tossed aside the melon-sized rock and knelt beside him. A woman. She could not pull off her helmet, shake out her beautiful hair and reveal herself; he could not sweep her into an embrace and
kiss her. But Ottorino heard the fanfare in his head. He took Rowan’s gauntleted hand in his own and held it against his heart.

When she had helped him to his feet, he gestured at the mortar and rocket, trying to explain what the hired killers had been going to do. She nodded, but kept gesturing at her helmet. What was she trying to tell him? He looked down the mountain and saw the red lights still winking, the shuttle still poised. Waiting for a pair of passengers? Had they been going to fire their missile and then sprint down and away, to a hasty boarding? What did it use to be called?
The getaway car
.

She gave up trying to get her point across and put her arms around him, holding tight. He realized belatedly that she had been gesturing at the volume knob on his speaker. He reached up with stiff fingers and switched it on, and instantly her voice was there inside his helmet, murmuring away in PanCelt.

“. . . but I didn’t think you were real, but you are real, really truly real, and I’m so sorry I didn’t trust you and I love you, I love you, I love you . . .”

He understood the last part, at least.

The
Kathmandu Post
scooped all presses on both Earth and Luna with the story, but not by much. Chiring was careful to relay every salient fact as it was uncovered, and the facts screamed:

That the would-be murderers, though in no condition to be interrogated (one dead, one in intensive care with a massive stroke following a skull fracture) had nonetheless plenty of papers with them, identifying them as employees of one Ben-Gen Enterprises, a shadowy firm under long-term investigation by Interpol. Further:

That the contracts hiring the representatives of Ben-Gen Enterprises had been ordered, approved, and paid for (out of the British Arean Company’s operating budget) by one Edwin Rotherhithe, presently General Director of the British Arean Company’s colony on Mars. The mortar and small missile had also been paid for by Edwin Rotherhithe, in violation of all international legislation concerning possession of such weaponry. Further:

That the operator of the private shuttle, while refusing to admit complicity, stated that he had been hired to transport the two employees of Ben-Gen Enterprises from Mars to Luna, in secrecy, at a specific prearranged time and with the understanding that they carried no luggage. He readily offered his contract to prove this, a contract signed and approved by the aforementioned Edwin Rotherhithe.

______

Mr. Rotherhithe had been roused from a sound sleep by the call, though it was well into mid-morning when it came; he had taken to sleeping in, of late. He had stumbled out to his office in his thermals, unshaven, wondering where in the world Mr. Nennius had got to. And now he sat at his desk, transfixed by the massed holographic glare of the board of directors. He had already stammered out his terrified denial, and was waiting through the lag time for their response. He might as well have been praying before images of wrathful saints in a stained-glass window. The waiting was unbearable; his nerves were screaming with tension by the time the image refreshed itself and revealed his persecutors still there, their positions only slightly shifted.

“What do you mean, it wasn’t your fault? Your name is all over these documents, General Director. The money was authorized using your private codes. And what was this other transaction with Ben-Gen? Do you think we’ll be able to hush that up?”

“And what’s this lease you signed with the Ephesian Church?” demanded someone else, with rising bile. “The
Ephesians
? You gave them
assistance
? The Ephesians, who sued us over Luna and won? And you authorized this Martian Agricultural Collective and all these concessions, what were you thinking? Who
are
these people? And what’s this lawsuit about, trying to get a Celtic Federation national committed to Hospital? Don’t you have a copy of the Aberrant Exclusion Act waiver? The judges have thrown it out and we’ve been fined! Do you realize what you’ve cost us?”

The transmission crackled out.

“No! No!” cried Mr. Rotherhithe. “This is all a horrible mistake. These were all your programs! Nennius introduced them, on your orders! Wait! I’ll bring him into the conference, and then he can explain!”

He sent his response and then looked around frantically. Where was Mr. Nennius? He had already been working away in Mr. Rotherhithe’s office every morning when Mr. Rotherhithe had arrived, and he generally
stayed late working after Mr. Rotherhithe left. Mr. Rotherhithe found it strange he wasn’t here now, in fact. In fact—

Did Mr. Rotherhithe even have any idea where Mr. Nennius lived? Fumbling with the desk console, he called up the commcode directory for Settlement Base personnel. William Nennius, William Nennius, William Nennius—

But Mr. Rotherhithe found no William Nennius listed anywhere. He began to cry quietly.

He pulled up all the interdepartmental memos Mr. Nennius had sent out over the last couple of months, and found to his horror that his own name, and no other, had been affixed to every one of them. But wait! There was the feed from his office surveillance cams. That would save him, that would offer up as vindicating proof every single smooth convincing word Mr. Nennius had spoken to him!

He input a request for the recorded feed.

DELETED
, was the reply.

In desperation he pulled open his desk drawer, hoping to find a scrap of paper, a jotted note, an initialed form, one shred of evidence that Mr. Nennius had ever existed. And there was one.

He drew it out and stared at it, bewildered. It was a playing card; the Joker, in fact. A rather odd Joker. Someone had drawn a classical statue, one he recognized vaguely. Greened bronze, empty eyes, one hand raised to proffer a fistful of lightning bolts. The Artemisium Zeus, that was what it was called. However, it had been drawn wearing a joker’s hat, red and yellow particolored, decked with little golden bells.