Return - Book III of the Five Worlds Trilogy (6 page)

Behind Shatz Abel, his crew spread out menacingly; the Tombaugh City officials who had come with the administrator backed fearfully away.

“Are you sure you want to see the actual piece of paper? I could tell you what it says—”

Letting anger blossom, Shatz Abel growled and continued to hold out his palm.

Larsen turned, quaking, and motioned to one of his underlings; the man turned and fled.

“And while we’re at it,” the pirate said as they waited, “how’re the pickings around here lately? Since Wrath-Pei’s demise, there must be plenty of Titan scrap in the pipeline—”

Forgetting his fear, Larsen bubbled, “Oh, yes! In some ways, things have never been better!”

Shatz Abel snorted. “We’ll be taking our share of that, too.”

Instantly, the administrator’s face froze. “Oh, I didn’t mean to say there was plenty! It’s just that … it’s a little better than it was!”

The pirate snorted again, loud enough to make Larsen jump. “As I said, we’ll be taking our share for the war effort on Earth.”

The underling returned, running as fast as he had leaving; fighting for breath, he placed a rolled parchment tied with the red ribbon in the administrator’s hand.

Roughly, Shatz Abel took the paper, tore off the ribbon, and opened it for inspection, his eyes narrowing as he read.

“Aggression by Earth … ? All force necessary… ? Imprisonment of pirates … ?” At this he turned and grinned at his henchmen. “Hear that, boys? We’re to be imprisoned!”

There rose a roar of laughter.

Shatz Abel returned to the paper, guffawing. “… followed by summary execution… ?”

Shaking his head, he folded the paper over on itself and creased it.

“You don’t mind if I fold it, do you?” he asked the administrator with a mock politeness that hid a well of growing animosity.

“Of … course … not!” Larsen squeaked.

“Good.” Shatz Abel continued to fold the treaty, making smaller and smaller squares.

He smiled at Larsen, held the treaty—now compacted into a four-sided object smaller than the width of three of the pirate’s fingers—gently between two fingers, and popped it into his mouth.

Loudly chewing, he turned to his men for support, which was fast in coming.

Swallowing, wiping a few crumbs of parchment from his beard, he turned back to Larsen and said, “Look! No more treaty!”

From the pirate’s crew stepped Yar Pent, bearing a parchment tied with blue ribbon.

“What’s this?” Shatz Abel said in mock surprise; he opened the new paper up and gave it to Administrator Larsen, who took it resignedly from the pirate.

“Read it if you want to,” Abel said, “but you’ll sign it nevertheless. From this moment on, Pluto is an ally of Earth.”

Dejectedly, Larsen signed the document, which Shatz Abel took back.

“And now,” the pirate said, “I think it’s time to celebrate!”

I
t was only much later, after the debauchery that followed, after a long night when the dawn of SunOne was rising over Tombaugh City, throwing its artificial and ghostly light upon the cold planet, that Shatz Abel sat with Yar Pent on the gangplank of their ship and let his guard down.

“You realize this piece of paper means nothing,” Shatz Abel said, drawing out the crumpled parchment from his tunic.

“Everyone here knows that,” Yar Pent replied, pausing to drain the last of a scatter of wine bottles littering the tarmac below them. “It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, I worry, all right,” Shatz Abel said. “Even though we’ve thrown a scare into Larsen and his cutthroats, as soon as we leave they’ll be back in Cornelian’s pocket. They know it, and so do we. That black-hearted bug has all the weapons and most of the manpower. We can’t control Pluto, or hold any of the moon outposts on Jupiter or Uranus. He’s got us beat out here before we start.”

“At least we can skim as much salvage and weaponry as possible before Cornelian turns his eye on us.”

“And that’s all we can do,” Shatz Abel said grimly. “We take what we can and turn tail and run for Earth. And then we wait for the worst.”

“It can’t be as bad as all that,” Yar said.

“Believe it,” Shatz Abel said, and now he showed anger. “I feel helpless, and I don’t like it. I promised that boy king that I’d get him back to Earth, and I did that. But now there’s precious little any of us can do to help him, now that he’s there. Once Cornelian turns his eye on Earth, that’ll be that.”

Yar brightened. “There’s always the Three Comets!”

“That they’ll smash Mars to bits? Ha! I’ll believe that when I see it. The Machine Master’ll waylay ’em, or whatnot.”

The pirate looked up into the false dawn of SunOne. “No, my friend,” he said, “at this point the High Leader of Mars holds all the cards.”

Chapter 8

“S
he is curiously strong,” the High Leader said, as he rested in the oil-filled half tub mounted on a rodded pedestal that served as both his bed and lubricant bath. He had decided to combine his monthly rest and renewal with business and repair, and one hand hung languidly from the side of the tub as the Machine Master worked on its bent digit.

The Machine Master, whose mind always seemed to be somewhere else, especially, these days, grunted as he worked; there was a tweak of electric spark as the finger was suddenly jerked back into its normal position.

“That nearly hurt,” the High Leader remarked.

“It is fixed,” the Machine Master answered tonelessly.

“I had no doubt that it would be,” Prime Cornelian said, still groggy from the bath itself. His pores felt as if they had been packed with silk, or smooth jelly; he felt almost liquid himself.

“You should rise soon,” the Machine Master commented; he was packing his tools into a slim case and rose to leave.

“I have not finished speaking,” Comelian said.

The Machine Master looked up at the High Leader, who floated like an insect on the surface of a pond; the tub was highly polished chrome; the room itself, the decking, the octagonal walls, and the sectioned, domed ceiling were mirrored and reflected a hundred High Leaders and Machine Masters throughout the room, like a kaleidoscope.

Cornelian’s eyes, glazed with oily film, studied the Machine Master of Mars. “Have you begun work on what I requested?”

“I have been busy with many things.”

“Don’t speak in circles. Yes or no.”

“Of course. It will take some time.”

“I have no doubt. But speed its progress.” The High Leader lifted his repaired finger to study it, working its smooth hinges in a flexing motion. “Remarkable.”

“I am also at work on a device to counteract the comets.”

“Of course. That is important, too.”

“More important, I would think.”

The High Leader let his hand sink into the bath. “No. I require my project first. Before anything else.”

There was hesitation before the Machine Master replied, “As you wish.”

“Always. Now you may go back to your dungeon. You may deactivate the lights as you leave.”

Without saying another word or bowing, as was required, the Machine Master turned and left; brushing his hand over a switch, he lowered the lights as he exited.

“Someday,” Prime Cornelian said listlessly to himself, “I will reward his impertinence.” The hollow drip of oil from the tub to the floor echoed in the chamber. “With death.”

He sank into the oil bath completely, letting out the thinnest of sighs.

S
am-Sei, Machine Master of Mars, negotiated the levels of the building by foot, passing busy ministries of war; offices awash with the activity of cataloging booty; other offices, bright with light, where prisoners were cataloged or condemned; offices of the Martian Marines, of the Red Police, of the Red Youth, of the Children of Venus and Children of Titan, which title had been recently changed to New Children of Mars; offices filled with bulging files; offices filled with the buzz of electronics; offices filled with other, smaller offices; offices filled with bureaucrats in search of bureaucracy, where spies lurked, where minor functionaries sought advancement, where children turned in their parents for treasonous offenses, real or imagined, where cooks cooked, where important-looking men in tunics did nothing at all, where wash was washed, forgotten treasures were stored, garbage was processed, bodies were cremated, rats lurked, things that ate rats hid; until, nearly an hour later, he reached the depths of his dungeon laboratory, Deep in the Martian soil like a stake driven into sand, its walls drizzled with scant moisture from a nearby aquifer, its dark recesses filled with ancient machines exposing their innards for use, racks of frayed parts, storage bins, works in progress. There were deeper corners where even stranger things lurked, half-finished projects, projects forever under construction.

Sam-Sei made his way to the most cobwebbed of these corners, moved aside a bin on wheels, a dusty, tall, conical-shaped booth, also on wheels and empty of parts inside. Behind it, out of sight of the High Leader’s most secret of SpyEyes (which the Machine Master had, of course, constructed himself and made sure contained a blind spot, knowing that Cornelian would have one installed in this chamber) was a satchel filled with very specialized tools; this he lifted, fingered the teleportation device in his tunic, and was gone from his laboratory.

He arrived in almost instantaneous time within his other laboratory a thousand miles away on Mars, hidden under an ancient crater bed in the Arabia Terra region. It was similar to his first laboratory, only more brightly and artificially lit; and no aquifer ran nearby, which rendered it bone dry.

“Good day,” Sam-Sei said matter-of-factly to the figure stretched out horizontally in a stasis web surrounded by a containment field: the effect was as if the figure were lying on a nonexistent gurney. The Machine Master set down his tool satchel, opened it, and drew out an elegantly long instrument; he bent over the prone figure and dispassionately studied the face, which stared up at him wide-eyed with something like terror.

“You wish to speak?” the Machine Master said.

The eyes, fighting the containment field as well as the stasis web, flicked slightly.

“Very well.”

Turning to a nearby table bearing more conventional tools than the one he held, the Machine Master found the device that controlled the containment field and deactivated it

The figure, naked save for a loincloth, thrashed in its web; still bound by the web’s stasis field, it appeared to be boxing in midair on its back.

“You must calm down or you will not be able to speak,” the Machine Master said.

The other calmed its movement somewhat; but the terror remained in its eyes and its mouth opened to let out a hoarse yet loud whisper.

“You—must--stop--this!”

“That is not an option,” Sam-Sei said.

“Cruel!”

“This is not a valuable conversation.” The Machine Master reactivated the containment field, throwing the lean figure out rigid and once again holding it tightly.

“Time to begin, for today,” the Machine Master said.

Even bound by two fields, the figure sought to fight and writhe. Its already lidless eyes drew even wider with terror as the Machine Master retrieved his elegant instrument, clicking its back end; from the front end issued a soft blue light, long and thin and sharper than any knife blade.

The Machine Master bent over the figure’s face and adjusted the containment field until the thin line covering the figure’s upper lip was free of the field, leaving it bare for cutting.

The figure’s lower lip had already been neatly sliced away, leaving the gum line and lower teeth exposed.

The Machine Master worked diligently and carefully—as if he were working on any of his machines, even though this one sought to fight madly, rigid with mad fear and eyes filled with more than physical pain.

“Do not even try to move,” Sam-Sei said mildly, giving advice. “It will only make it worse.”

Amazingly, the prone victim was able to make a sound like hurt, deep in its throat; fighting blindly against the field, it was able to move its upper lip ever so slightly, making the Machine Master’s cut suddenly uneven.

“That will only prolong it,” Sam-Sei said testily. He straightened and worked on the containment fields, making the web restrict the figure’s movements even more. Then he lightened the containment field around the upper lip, binding it tight as ice.

He retrieved his instrument and continued his work on the upper lip, restarting from one end and making the entire cut a bit higher, to banish the unevenness.

“I would have thought, Wrath-Pei,” the Machine Master said, “that you would have wanted my handiwork to be as elegant as your own. For in the end,” Sam-Sei said, pausing momentarily in his work to look into the horror-filled eyes of his brother, “you will look exactly like me.”

Chapter 9

T
rel Clan, faux child, waited, and watched, and waited.

His days were filled with as much empty space as they had been when he worked in Titan’s Ministry of Foreign Import Trade, Second-Class Division, Expendable Goods (MFITSCDEG). There, he had been a minister with a desk and no discernible job; here, he had no desk. Being a Titanian child on Mars was as much of a mindless activity as being a Minister of Nothing. He was used to wasting time.

And waiting.

Waiting was what he did best. For within Trel Clan were two things: hatred and lust. If he had thought on it, which he did not, he would have discovered that these two qualities had always existed within him, with room for very little else in the way of appetites. He had only been waiting to have them given form and function.

Again, if Trel Clan had been subject to self-reflection (which, again, he was not), he would have discovered that though his hatred had, up until recently, been formless and generalized, being directed more or less at the race of all other sentient beings, his lust had always been more localized. For in all those years before and during his ministration at MFITSCDEG, there had always been in the most backward recesses of his mind the feeling, if not the exact certainty, that the twenty successors ahead of him—cousins, aunts, uncles, and, yes, second and third cousins—to the throne of Kamath Clan, Queen of Titan, should not exist; and that he, Trel Clan, had right to that glorious throne. There had always been the (again) formless impression that he, a distant relative to the queen and for whom indeed the Ministry of Foreign Import Trade, Second-Class Division, Expendable Goods, had been created (after much begging by his mother, who had managed to do something Trel Clan himself never had done: meet the queen), more deserved to wear the crown on Titan than the queen, or her son Jamal, did. Such had been his lust.