Red Rising (17 page)

“Are you stupid? Do you see razors about? Idiot. Go away. We’ll duel after the Passage.”

“Passage …?” Julian finally asks what I’m thinking.

The scrawny kid grins wickedly. Even his teeth are khaki.

“It’s the last test, idiot. And the best secret this side of the rings around Octavia au Lune’s cootch.”

“Then how do you know about it?” I ask.

“Inside track,” the kid says. “And I don’t know about it. I know
of
it, you giant pisshead.”

His name is Sevro, and I like his angle.

But the talk of a Passage worries me. There is so little I know, I realize, as I listen in as Julian strikes up a conversation with the last member of our shuttle. They talk about their test scores. There is a severe disparity between their low scores and mine. I notice Sevro snort as they say theirs aloud. How did applicants with such low scores get in? I’ve got an ill feeling in my gut. And what did Sevro score?

We come to the Valles Marineris in darkness. It is a great scar of light across Mars’s black surface, going as far as eyes can see. At the center of it, the capital city of my planet rises in the night like a
garden of jewelswords. Nightclubs flicker on rooftops, dance floors made of condensed air. Scantily-dressed girls and foolish boys rise and fall as gravMixers play with physics. NoiseBubbles separate city blocks. We cut through them and hear worlds of different sounds.

The Institute is beyond Agea’s night districts and is built into the side of the eight-kilometer-high walls of the Valles Marineris. The walls rise like tidal waves of green stone cradling civilization with flora. The Institute itself is made of white stone—a place of columns and sculpture, Roman to its core.

I have not been here before. But I have seen the columns. Seen the destination of our voyage. Bitterness wells in me like bile rising from stomach to throat as I think of his face. Think of his words. His eyes as they scanned the crowd. I watched on the HC as the ArchGovernor gave his speech time and again to the classes before my own. Soon I’ll hear it from his lips myself. Soon I’ll suffer the rage. Feel the fire lick over my heart as I see him in person once again.

We land on a drop pad and are shepherded into an open-air marble square looking over the vast valley. The night air is crisp. Agea sprawls behind and the gates of the Institute stretch before us. I stand with over a thousand Goldbrows, all glancing about with the cocksureness of their race. Many clump together, friends from beyond the white walls of the school. I did not think their classes so large.

A tall Golden man flanked by Obsidians and a coterie of Gold advisors rises on a pair of gravBoots before the gate. My heart goes cold as I recognize his face and hear his voice and see the glimmer in his ingot eyes.

“Welcome, children of Aureate,” ArchGovernor Nero au Augustus says in a voice as smooth as Eo’s skin. It is preternaturally loud. “I assume you understand the gravity of your presence here. Of the thousand cities of Mars. Of all the Great Families, you are the chosen few. You are the peak of the human pyramid. Today, you will begin your campaign to join the best caste of our race. Your fellows
stand like you in the Institutes of Venus, of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres of Earth, of Luna, of the Gas Giant Moons, of Europa, of the Astrodian Greek Cluster and the Astrodian Trojan Cluster, of Mercury, of Callisto, of the joint venture Enceledas and Ceres, and of the farpioneers of Hildas.”

It seems only a day ago that I knew I was a pioneer of Mars. Only a day ago that I suffered so that humanity, desperate to leave a dying Earth, could spread to the red planet. Oh, how well my rulers lied.

Behind Augustus, in the stars, there’s movement, but it is not the stars that move. Nor is it asteroids or comets. It is the Sixth and Fifth Fleets. The Armada of Mars. My breath catches in my chest. The Sixth Fleet is commanded by Cassius’s father, while the smaller Fifth Fleet is under the ArchGovernor’s direct control. Most of the ships are owned by families who owe allegiance to either Augustus or Bellona.

Augustus shows us why we, they, rule. My flesh tingles. I am so small. A billion tons of durosteel and nanometal move through the heavens, and I have never been beyond Mars’s atmosphere. They are like specks of silver in an ocean of ink. And I am so much less. But those specks could ravage Mars. They could destroy a moon. Those specks rule the ink. An Imperator commands each fleet; a Praetor commands squadrons within that fleet. What I could do with that power …

Augustus is haughty as he gives his speech. I swallow the bile in my throat. Because of the impossible distance of my enemies, my anger was once a cold, quiet sort. Now it burns in me.

“Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their own Decadence.”

He tells us how the Persians were felled, how the Romans collapsed because their rulers forgot how their parents gained them an empire. He prattles about Muslim dynasties and European effeminacy and Chinese regionalism and American self-loathing and self-neutering. All the ancient names.

“Our Savagery began when our capital, Luna, rebelled against
the tyranny of Earth and freed herself from the shackles of Demokracy, from the Noble Lie—the idea that men are brothers and are created equal.”

Augustus weaves lies of his own with that golden tongue of his. He tells of the Goldens’ suffering. The Masses sat on the wagon and expected the great to pull, he reminds. They sat whipping the great until we could no longer take it.

I remember a different whipping.

“Men are not created equal; we all know this. There are averages. There are outliers. There are the ugly. There are the beautiful. This would not be if we were all equal. A Red can no more command a starship than a Green can serve as a doctor!”

There’s more laughter across the square as he tells us to look at pathetic Athens, the birthplace of the cancer they call Demokracy. Look how it fell to Sparta. The Noble Lie made Athens weak. It made their citizens turn on their best general, Alcibiades, because of jealousy.

“Even the nations of Earth grew jealous of one another. The United States of America exacted this idea of equality through force. And when the nations united, the Americans were surprised to find that they were disliked! The Masses are jealous! How wonderful a dream it would be if all men were created equal! But we are not.

“It is against the Noble Lie that we fight. But as I said before, as I say to you now, there is another evil against which we war. It is a more pernicious evil. It is a subversive, slow evil. It is not a wildfire. It is a cancer. And that cancer is Decadence. Our Society has passed from Savagery to Ascendance. But like our spiritual ancestors, the Romans, we too can fall into Decadence.”

He speaks of the Pixies.

“You are the best of humanity. But you have been coddled. You have been treated like children. Were you born to a different Color, you would have calluses. You would have scars. You would know pain.”

He smiles as if he knows pain. I hate this man.

“You think you know pain. You think the Society is an inevitable
force of history. You think Her the end of history. But many have thought that before. Many ruling classes have believed theirs to be the last, the pinnacle. They grew soft. Fat. They forgot that calluses, wounds, scars, hardship, preserve all those fine pleasure clubs you young boys love to frequent and all those fine silks and diamonds and unicorns you girls ask for on birthdays.

“Many Aureates have not sacrificed. That is why they do not wear this.” He shows a long scar on his right cheek. Octavia au Lune has the same scar. “The Scar of a Peer. We are not the masters of the Solar System because we are born. We are the masters because we, the Peerless Scarred, the iron Golds, made it that way.”

He touches the scar on his cheek. I’d give him another if I were closer. The children around me suck down this man’s garbage like oxygen.

“Right now, the Colors who mine this planet are harder than you. They are born with calluses. Born with scars and hatred. They are tough as nanosteel. Fortunately, they are also very stupid. For instance, this
Persephone
you have no doubt heard of is nothing more than a dim girl who thought singing a song was worth a hanging.”

I bite a bloody hole in my cheek. My skin shivers from rage as I find out that my wife is part of this bastard’s speech.

“The girl did not even know the video would be leaked. Yet it is her willingness to suffer hardship that gave her power. Martyrs, you see, are like bees. Their only power comes in death. How many of you would sacrifice yourself to not kill, but merely hurt your enemy? Not one of you, I wager.”

I taste blood in my mouth. I have the knifeRing Dancer gave me. But I breathe the fury down. I am no martyr. I am not vengeance. I am Eo’s dream. Still, doing nothing while her murderer gloats feels like a betrayal.

“In time you will receive your Scars from my sword,” Augustus closes. “But first you must earn them.”

“Son of Linus and Lexus au Andromedus, both of the House Apollo. Would you prefer to mark yourself as requesting House Apollo preferentiality?” a tedious Aureate administrator asks me.

Goldbrows’ first loyalty is to Color, then family, then planet, then House. Most Houses are dominated by one or two powerful families. On Mars, the Family Augustus, the Family Bellona, and the Family Arcos influence all others.

“No,” I reply.

He shuffles over his datapad. “Very well. How do you believe you performed on the slangSmarts test? That is the extrapolational test,” he clarifies.

“I think my results speak for themselves.”

“You were not paying attention, Darrow. I shall mark that against you. I’m asking for
you
to speak for your results.”

“I think I took a gory piss on your test, sir.”

“Ah.” He smiles. “Well, you did. You did. House Minerva for brains might be right for you. Perhaps Pluto, for the deviousness. Apollo for the pride. Yes. Hmm. Well, I have a test for you. Please
complete it to the best of your ability. Interviews will commence when you have finished.”

The test is quick and it is in the form of an immersion game. There is a goblet on a hill that I need to acquire. Many obstacles stand in my way. I pass them as rationally as possible, trying to hide my anger when a little elf steals a key I acquire. But every step of the way, there’s some damn setback, some inconvenience. And it is always unforeseen. It is always something beyond the bounds of extrapolation. In the end, I reach the goblet, but only after killing an annoying wizard and cruelly enslaving the race of elves by means of said wizard’s magic wand. I could have left the elves be. But they annoyed me.

Soon, the interviewers come in intervals. I learn they are called Proctors. Each one of them is a Peerless Scarred. They are chosen by the ArchGovernor to teach and represent the students of the House within the Institute.

All said, the Proctors are impressive. There’s a huge Scarred man with hair like a lion and a lightning bolt on his collar for Jupiter, a matronly woman with gentle golden eyes, and a quick-witted man with winged feet on his collar. He can’t sit still and his baby face seems immensely fascinated by my hands. He makes me play a game with him in which he puts out both hands flat and facing up and I put mine atop facing down. He tries slapping my hands, but never quite manages. He leaves after clapping his hands together in joy.

Another strange encounter comes when a beautiful man with coiled hair interviews me. A bow marks his collar. Apollo. He asks me how attractive I believe myself to be and is displeased when I undershoot his estimate. Still, I think he likes me, because he asks me what I would like to be one day.

“An Imperator of a fleet,” I say.

“You could do great things with a fleet. But a lofty notion,” he sighs, accenting every word with a feline purr. “Perhaps too lofty for your family. Maybe if you had a benefactor of better familial origin. Yes, maybe then.” He looks at his datapad. “But unlikely due to your birth. Hm. Best of luck.”

I sit alone for an hour or more till a sullen man comes to join me. His unfortunate face is pinched like a hatchet, but he has the Scar and a razor hilt hangs on his hip. His name is Fitchner. A wad of gum fills his mouth. The uniform he wears is black with gold, and it nearly conceals the slight belly paunch that sticks outward despite the faint smell of metabolizers. Like many of the others, he wears badges about his personage. A golden wolf with two heads decorates his collar. And a strange hand marks his cuff.

“They give me the mad dogs,” he says. “They give me the killers of our race, the ones full of piss and napalm and vinegar.” He sniffs the air. “You smell full of shit.”

I say nothing. He leans against the door and frowns at it as though it offended him in some way. Then back to me, sniffing improperly.

“Problem is, we of House Mars always burn out. Kids rule the Institute at first. Then they find out that napalm lasts about …” He snaps his fingers. I have no reply. He sighs and plops down in a chair. After a while of watching me, he stands and punches me in the face. “If you punch me back, you will be sent home, Pixie.”