Return - Book III of the Five Worlds Trilogy (10 page)

“Just leave it.”

“Whatever you say—boss.”

Visid took a can of peanuts and threw one to Benel, who groaned.

“We’ll need something to eat,” she said, the closest she had come to a smile in weeks crossing her face.

I
t was truly beautiful outside. Grasses had bloomed, which made Benel sneeze, but filled the air with a thick warm odor like a green blanket. In the distance the slopes of Sacajawea Patera had bloomed into a riot of colors that, from afar, looked as though they had been splashed on. The glass spike of the Piton glinted sunlight and looked as though it had been fired from a bow into the side of the mountain.

The road out of Frolich City was choked with new weeds; to either side wildflowers grew; Benel, preoccupied with his allergy, began to protest when Visid stopped to pull something out of the ground.

“Isn’t it bad enough I’ve got to be in the middle of them?” he complained. “Don’t pick—hey!”

His objection turned to delight as Visid handed him a fully grown carrot; she stooped to yank three more out of the ground.

“I don’t believe it!” Benel laughed, happily munching on the vegetable.

“We used to find them all the time when I lived here,” Visid said. “There are probably potatoes out here, too, and wild berries. If we have time on the way back, we’ll look.”

Benel was crouching in the weeds, pushing them aside and trying not to sneeze. “Why not now? Berries would be wonderful!”

Visid began to walk. “When we get back.”

Pouting, Benel followed; to assuage him, Visid suddenly veered off the road, rummaging, and returned with a duster of strawberries, which she thrust into his hands.

“More later,” she said, as he ate greedily.

W
hen, at midday, they reached the base of Sacajawea Patera, Benel’s spirits lifted when he saw that the lift tube, which had barely worked the last time he had visited, was now completely useless; a rock fall had covered the entrance, and only a mining operation could uncover it.

“Well, that’s that!” Benel said happily. “Time to go home—and we’ll look for more strawberries on the way!”

Visid studied the mess of boulders, soil, and roots in front of the lift tube and said, “There must be another way up. This glass lift tube was designed for tourists. There must be a freight entrance.”

“Who cares?” Benel answered; but then, to his horror, she began to look for it.

“Probably equidistant from the main entrance, on the other side of the Piton,” she remarked, studying the spike of glass, their destination, above them. Cursing under his breath, Benel followed her, preparing himself for the hike ahead.

A
fter an hour’s walk, they didn’t find a second entrance, but they did stumble on the body of Carter Frolich.

He had fallen from a great height, and the body, all odd and sad angles, had partially decomposed; but Benel Kran knew immediately from the empty eye sockets and remaining facial features that they had found what was left of the Father of Venus.

“You’re sure that’s him?” Visid asked.

“Yes. Can we go now?”

She was studying the Piton. “We still have to go up.”

“Why? He’s dead! He was crazy, and he jumped!”

“Maybe,” she said, continuing to study; her glance drifted slowly down the slope and rested finally on a spot to the right and a little above the plain.

“There it is,” she said, and began to hike.

Giving a final glance at the poor remains of Carter Frolich, Benel joined her.

F
ifteen minutes later, after a short climb up what had once been a road but now, due to mudslides and rock falls, had become an adventure, they stood before the second entrance.

It was untouched, and the huge lift tube within was in perfect order. They rode up within the bowels of the mountain in smooth silence. In the darkness, Benel asked uneasily, “What are we looking for?” But Visid said nothing.

The doors opened from darkness into bright daylight streaming through every facet of the Piton’s glass, floor, ceiling, and walls. They stood on a plain of clear quartz. Ahead was a translucent glass hallway that reflected strange shadows of the rooms to either side; and to their right was another, which opened up at the end into a great room of glass.

Visid turned to the right.

Benel soon was oriented; they passed the clogged opening of the tourists’ lift tube and were suddenly in the Piton’s main room. When Benel had last been here, there had been a wreckage of overturned tables, half-destroyed blueprints and crushed architect’s models. Now the room was eerily clean, brushed free of wreckage and furniture and even dust.

“I don’t like this,” Benel said.

There was a cold draft in the room, which drove up, they discovered, from a thick hole in the quartz glass floor near the facing panoramic window. It was neatly cut, like a cavity augered in ice.

“We need to find what he did before he jumped,” Visid said, studying the hole.

“Or was pushed,” Benel Kran replied, getting dizzy as he looked down toward the spot where Carter Frolich’s body lay, a thousand feet below. He looked away.

There was a flash of light, and a plasma soldier appeared at the far end of the room; in a moment there was another beside it.

Benel gasped as yet a third light soldier appeared. “I told you we needed the degenerator!” he cried in despair.

The light soldiers blinked out, then on, and now stood directly before Benel and Visid. They advanced, triangulating, driving the two humans toward the hole in the floor.

Visid searched frantically for something in her rucksack.

The three soldiers blinked out again and then on, all ready to use their weapons.

Crying out, Benel Kran stumbled back into Visid, driving the two of them into the hole as the plasma soldiers barely missed them.

Benel fell, clutching at Visid, who ignored him, yanking what she sought from her rucksack before letting the pack go.

Benel watched the ground rush up at them; too frightened to scream, he thought he could see the broken body of Carter Frolich waiting for them below, bent and beckoning—

“Yes!” Visid shouted, as the ground flew up to meet them; and now Benel, on the verge of extinction, did find his voice long enough to screech, “NOOOOO!”

And then something curled around him and took him away.

Chapter 13

I
t had been a long time since the High Leader had visited the dungeon haunts of Sam-Sei in person. Though he would never admit it to himself, he found the place unnerving. First, there was the faint dampness—an unnatural thing on Mars, and naturally abhorrent to the High Leader’s metallic carapace. Second, there was the preponderance of things—machines, parts of machines, spools of cables, strange tools—that Prime Cornelian did not understand. He did not like being around things he could not understand, and usually had them destroyed.

And third, there was… Sam-Sei himself.

The Machine Master had always been a necessary annoyance to the High Leader. And he continued to be necessary. But lately, in the days following the Half-Day War with Titan, Sam-Sei had become downright bizarre. His behavior, always taciturn at best, had become absolutely cryptic. And while the High Leader had no doubt that Sam-Sei carried on certain actions behind the High Leader’s back (didn’t everyone, in relation to everyone else?), the feeling had begun to grow in Prime Cornelian that the Machine Master’s secret actions might now be interfering with his work for the High Leader.

And this, of course, could not be tolerated—no matter how valuable the Machine Master was.

And so, while the High Leader had found it convenient, and preferable, in the past months to conduct his business with Sam-Sei via Screen (or spies, or spy devices, which had proved—speak of annoyance!—particularly ineffective in the Machine Master’s case, yet not so unbelievable, since Sam-Sei had developed most of those devices, had he not?), he now found a physical visit unavoidable.

Which did not allay the High Leader’s distaste; or feeling of … unease.

“I see you have been hard at work,” the High Leader said without preamble on entering the underground space. He found the light, issuing from four slits in the wall at the top of the subterranean chambers, inadequate, as always, and, as always, found that his quartz orbs barely were able to compensate. He had the sneaking feeling that the Machine Master had known this when designing his body—another in the long, long list of offenses for which Sam-Sei would one day pay with his life.

Sam-Sei, as always, barely acknowledged his presence; the deformed Machine Master merely grunted, bent over a worktable, one eye impossibly close to an ancient breadboard of electronic components as he poked delicately at it with a pencil-like object that occasionally let off a brilliantly thin rod of violet light from its tip, followed by an acrid smell.

Though devoid of all vanity himself, the High Leader still found himself fascinated by the Machine Master’s appearance: the sallow skin, sunken eyes of a brackish color, the grossly high forehead and balding pate of yellow-gray hair—and, most startling, the neatly snipped away lips, which made him truly grotesque.

“There’s something I’ve always meant to ask you, Sam-Sei,” the High Leader said, momentarily distracted from the true reason of his visit.

“And that is?” the Machine Master replied curtly, without straying attention from his work. The pencil in his fingers let out a hiss of purple light, followed by a tiny puff of odorous smoke on the breadboard.

“Why have you never done anything about your appearance? Everything Wrath-Pei inflicted on you could have been repaired with genetic regrowth, could it not?”

There was a momentary twitch in the Machine Master’s concentration, then another thin flash of light from his tool into the breadboard. “Not everything.”

“Oh?”

“It’s of no interest to you.”

“Everything is of interest to me.”

For the only time since he had known Sam-Sei, the High Leader was treated to true anger, rather than rudeness. The Machine Master put down his tool and turned to look at the High Leader; there was a flush of color in his pockmarked checks and in the hollow of his pockmarked throat.

But in a moment it was gone, and the Machine Master returned to his work, retrieving the tool. There was another flash of light.

“Let us say I choose to remember,” Sam-Sei said after a moment.

“Even now that your brother is dead?”

“I still wish to remember.”

“I would have thought that the orgasm of revenge would have expiated such feelings.”

“You are not I. Nor I, you.”

“Ah. These deeper feelings, I have never understood. When I was stricken with the Puppet Death, I could think of but one thing: to live on. Granted, I was never handsome to begin with, but yet, I felt no animosity toward the disease itself. And once you constructed this excellent body for me, my primary objective had been fulfilled.”

The Machine Master made no answer.

The High Leader waited a beat and then said, “Wrath-Pei is dead, is he not?”

“As I told you, my interview with him was completed.”

“Yes, so you said six months ago, when you brought me Tabrel Kris from Titan. I must admit I was so overcome with happiness at the time that I didn’t think as clearly as I should have. You wouldn’t by any chance have Wrath-Pei hidden in here, would you?”

“No. And for what purpose?”

The High Leader chuckled. “I never bother with anyone’s purposes but my own. But you wouldn’t mind if a few of my Red Police have a look around after I leave, would you?”

The Machine Master’s features flirted with anger again. But his only response was, “If you wish. But they must be careful.”

“Of course. They know that I would execute them if they disturbed any of your work. And now, the reason for my unaccustomed visit: I wish to see what you have been working on for me.”

Still concentrating on his breadboard, the Machine Master said, “In a moment.”

“You do have progress to show me, do you not?”

“Yes. On two fronts.”

“Excellent! Then show me now.”

Apparently this was a day for flirtation, for the High Leader could see by the minute changes on the Machine Master’s face that he wanted to make Prime Cornelian wait; but good sense overruled foolishness and Sam-Sei set down his tool and turned to negotiate a narrow passageway between racks and opened an-dent??? machine cabinets; he disappeared into a darkened area of the chambers.

“Well?” the High Leader called out after a moment. “Back here,” came the laconic reply.

The High Leader followed, tightening the width of his body as much as possible.

There was a hollowed-out area near one of the back walls, which was spotted with dampness; though the area was directly under one of the slitted windows high up on the ceiling, the day’s light was thrown in a beam across the room and away from where it was needed. Still, there was enough illumination to see by.

“Ah!” Prime Comelian said, examining the beginnings of a huge machine; it was a hollowed-out black cylinder topped with what appeared to be the makings of a gigantic radar dish. “What is it?”

“An Irregulator. With it, I hope to divert the Three Comets from striking Mars.”

“Will it work?”

“Given enough attention. But work will need to be rechanneled from … other projects.”

“Such as?”

“All other projects.”

The High Leader’s eyes widened. “Show me what progress you have made on what I requested.”

Nodding in mute acknowledgment, the Machine Master abandoned the Irregulator and walked into an even deeper area of the chambers. Butted up against the wall itself was a low object of some two meters in length covered with a tarp; the tarp was speckled with tiny pooling drops of water.

As the High Leader, grunting in frustration at the tightness of the spot, settled himself before the object, the Machine Master removed the tarp with a flourish.