The Empress of Mars (22 page)

“No—” began Mr. Rotherhithe.

“—Problem. It’s the least we can do,” said Mr. Nennius, smiling. “And may I offer a further incentive? The British Arean Company will provide air and heat free of charge until your generators are built and online.”

Mr. Rotherhithe closed his mouth. He saw the shrewd looks being exchanged between the members of the Collective; he heard Mr. Nennius going on and on in a pleasant bray, describing Mars in lyrical terms for their benefit. Mr. Rotherhithe withdrew mentally. He imagined Ms. Lash towering above him, fury in her fine eyes, and bit his lip as he imagined the impact of her riding crop . . . and History put down her spiked heel and pinned him securely.

In spite of aggravations, Celtic Energy Systems got its pumping station built and online. Though the easy-to-follow assembly holo was indeed in five languages, they turned out to be Telugu, Swahili, Pashto, Malayalam and Hakka. Fortunately, most of the orderlies in the Hospital where Mr. Morton had grown up had spoken Swahili, and he had picked up enough to follow assembly directions.

Of course, the pipes hadn’t been installed yet, so there was no way to send water, power, heat or steam anywhere; but Mr. Morton had fabricated an elegant little neo-Gothic structure to house the pumping and power station, a sort of architectural prototype, as he explained, for the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Cabaret, and he was already happily designing the Downtown Arts Plaza and Promenade.

Ottorino squinted against the sunlight, peered up at the clock on the façade of the town hall. Any minute now, the stagecoach would be arriving from Kansas City, with the hired gunmen aboard. And he had only his six-gun and his sense of justice to defend himself . . .

Odd, though, how disagreeably yellow the sunlight seemed, and how dark a blue the sky was. And what a leaden heaviness seemed to bear him down! He put up a hand to wipe his sweating face and, to his
horror, encountered no mask.
Why had he gone outside without his mask?
He turned and bolted for the saloon, but saw that it had no airlock: only the swinging doors, and what protection would they afford from the airless void? Rowan, where was Rowan, had she been able to mask up in time?

He woke sweating, and she was struggling awake too in his arms where he clenched her. “What?” she demanded in PanCelt, and then repeated her question in her charmingly accented Italian. He collapsed backward in relief, into the cozy layer of spongy lichen that served as a mattress.

“Only a foolish dream, my love,” he said. Rowan made a tiny disgruntled noise and curled up against him once more. He checked his buke and saw that it was early morning. In another half hour Mamma Griffith would be pumping water for the tea, and the one-eyed madwoman would begin frying up breakfast. The little white sun would peer over the close horizon, beautifully rimmed in violet. The sky would pale to a thin wintery blue, with pink plumes of dust whirling in the distance. And Ottorino would go forth into the bracing frost with a light heart, and a lighter step, to the day’s work . . .

Rowan yawned, stretched, and looked up at him. “You answer her the communication from your brothers send by this time?” she inquired, in Italian.

“Not yet,” said Ottorino.

“You should do this,” said Rowan.

“Okay,” said Ottorino, and pulling out his buke he thumbed in the message function and dictated: “Dear Giulio and Giuseppe, how are you? Please give my love to Elvira, Sophia, Clara, Gianetta, and all the little children. At the moment I am lying in bed with my beautiful bride, who sends you all sisterly kisses.”

Rowan made an outraged sound and slapped his arm.

“You don’t want to send them kisses? Yes? Oh, you want me to be businesslike. Very well. My brothers, thank you for the crates of merchandise, which arrived here safely yesterday. We have not unpacked them yet because I am in the process of laying the power and water
lines for the Emporium. This should be finished in a few more days. It would have been done before now but our friends from the Celtic Federation about whom I told you have not been able to work. They have some legal problem and are all very upset. Do not be alarmed, though, as I am working very hard and my Incan friend is helping me. By next week we will have water, air, and light, and Emporium di Vespucci will have a grand opening.”

“Good,” said Rowan.

“My wife makes me work very hard, so I had better send this and get back to work,” Ottorino finished, and sent his message on to the relay station queue with a flick of his thumb. “They’ll like you better if they think you are managing me,” he explained, rolling over and finding his psuit in the shadows at the back of the loft. He shook lichen from it and pulled it on himself while lying down.

“So you’re starting to feel trapped,” said Rowan, in PanCelt. “I knew you would. I wonder how long you’ll stick it out?” But in Italian she said only, “I am traveling down to make your tea.”

She descended on her line, like a nymph of the air. He caught the line as it came back up, clipped it on, leaned out and soared down proudly as an eagle.

They went out all together to the work site, Ottorino and Manco and Mr. Morton, trundling the dolly with its big tubes of caulking material. Chiring accompanied them with his handcam.

“What did mankind imagine, when it first contemplated its flight into the stars?” he intoned into his recorder, in Nepali. “A brief examination of early science fiction reveals a touching confidence in state-supported technology. Giant equipment was envisioned, perhaps run by humanoid robots, as silver-clad settlers watched from the comfort of their rocket ships. Atomic space-age life would be effortless and clean! No one thought for a moment of sweat, blisters, or shovels. Will humanity continue its voyages among the stars when it understands the labor involved?”

Ottorino grinned into the foremost camera, turned up the volume knob on his mask and hefted his pick. “Coming soon to the Tharsis Bulge!” he said in Italian. “Emporium di Vespucci, where the finest in domestic goods can be had for low, low prices! Whether you’re equipping yourself for a prospecting expedition or simply furnishing the home, Emporium di Vespucci is your first choice for value and economy!”

They came to the worksite and resumed the long monotonous labor: dig a length of trench, drop in a length of pipe, connect the pipe, repeat. They had found that there was no point in digging the whole trench first, as the winds would only fill it up with red sand at once. They were five pipelengths farther down the hill by the time Ottorino spotted Rowan carrying their midday meal down the Tube. They had crossed half the distance to where she waited by the lock when the siren went off.

“What on Earth?” Mr. Morton turned, staring. Chiring swung around and trained his handcam on the lock down by Morrigan Hall, from which the CeltCart, the Rover, and all four Jinma tractors came rocketing. With a spray of gravel and rising plumes of dust they fanned out, seemingly intent on following the perimeter line of Settlement Base.

“What’s happened?” Rowan demanded when they stepped through the lock, and then repeated her question in Italian.

“Is there an emergency?” Ottorino inquired.

“They’ll announce something in half a minute,” said Mr. Morton, wringing his hands.

But no announcement came. After ten minutes it seemed a shame to let the tea get cold, so they drank it and ate the sandwiches Rowan had brought, still staring out at the dust plumes making their way around the far end of Settlement Base.

“Perhaps they’re having some sort of race,” Chiring suggested.

“They’re supposed to be helping us,” said Manco, annoyed. “Not having tractor races.”

“I’m sure it isn’t that,” said Rowan. “We’ll find out in another minute.”

The minute came and went. At last they spotted someone making her way up the Tube from below: Lulu from Clan Morrigan, with tears streaming from the edges of her mask and drying to little salt-crusts. She seemed frightened.

“Rowan, dear, where’s herself?”

“Home,” said Rowan. “This is the day we brew the porter. What’s going on?”

“It’s our Perrik,” Lulu replied with a whimper.

It transpired, when Lulu had been escorted to the Empress and sat down with a drink, and Mary had disengaged herself from the brewing process sufficiently to come lend a sympathetic ear, that the British Arean Company had once more made a play for seizing custody of Perrik in order to ship him down to Hospital. And, though it turned out that in fact what the British Arean Company had done was simply file another copy of their original demand in accordance with the appeals process that was dragging its way through some distant court, the clan operator who took the incoming message didn’t read far enough to discover that before he had gone haring off to tell the others. Some individual—Lulu swore she’d never reveal whom, as no one should be saddled with such shame—had misunderstood, thinking that the British Arean Company officials were in fact on their way to Morrigan Hall even now with an armed team of Public Health Officers, and this person had run out to the nearest allotment and shouted the news to the workers there, so that they might come rushing with their farm implements to Perrik’s defense.

And, despite all the excitement, one or two sharp-eyed people had noticed that the biis, who had been roaming over the allotment doing their job, had then risen in a cloud and streamed out through one of the air conduits. Other people, not yet having heard the news, had also seen biis deserting the allotments en masse, and wondered why.

By the time the message had actually been read all the way through, and all the shouted orders countermanded and all the panic had subsided, it was found that there wasn’t a bii to be seen anywhere. Shortly afterward, it was discovered that Perrik was missing.

“With only his dear psuit and mask gone,” said Lulu, brushing away tears. “The poor little unworldly darling didn’t take so much as a crust nor a thermos bottle with him, and he’s nowhere within the clan holdings, and chief is certain he’s got frightened and run off Outside! His only child!” she added, with a resentful glance at Alice’s baby bulge.

“Perrik’s not a child. So you’re all searching the bounds,” said Mary patiently. “Sure he didn’t leave a note or anything?”

“Wasn’t that the first thing we looked for?” said Lulu with a wail. “And chief is just beside himself! Of course he went rushing out with the search crews, but you know how the wind blows away tracks up here. But now we’ve gone and lost our biis, that were going to make us all billionaires! And there’s some saying it would be better for the poor darling to die up here, rather than get carted away down to some Hospital where they’d put him on all manner of meds and keep him locked up until the end of his blessed days—”

“Right,” said Mary, who had had enough. “I’ll just go down the hill and have a look at things, then, shall I?”

Those members of the clan who were not out on the search had assembled in Morrigan Hall, and were watching the quartered feed from the Jinmas’ forecams on the big screen there, lamenting and sighing.
Just as well I’m not a BAC spy
, thought Mary as she wandered in to Cochevelou’s chambers unquestioned. The hatch through into Perrik’s room had been left unsealed, half-open in fact. She went through and looked around.

The room was silent and dark. The globe frame in the corner stood empty, deserted.
Wherever he’s gone, he took his biis with him
, Mary thought. She turned slowly, studying the room. What else was different?
Something was. Something was missing; there were gaps, here and there, in the neatly arranged line of tools. Mary stared hard at them, trying to remember the room as it had used to look.

When she thought she had a fairly good idea of what Perrik must have taken with him, she nodded and walked back up the Tube to her own house.

“If you were going to hide, Mr. Morton, where would you do it?” asked Mary.

Mr. Morton looked up, taken somewhat aback. He twisted a bar rag in his hands a moment. “Well, in Hospital one always had to mind where the surveillance cams were. If one could get behind one of them and get into the ventilation shafts, there were a number of places to conceal oneself. Of course, it isn’t as easy as cinema always makes it look, escaping through ventilation shafts—”

“Even harder if yer wearing a straitjacket,” agreed Alf the Hauler, who was sitting at the bar.

“Oh, I never even tried when I was straitjacketed,” said Mr. Morton. “Winksley Hospital for the Psychologically Suspect had jackets with those big brass Number Three buckles, you know.”

“Heh! I could pop a Number Free. Da fing was, yer had to take a deep breff whiles dey was fastening you in,” explained Alf. “Sort of bloat up like one of dem fishes.”

“Very likely, Mr. Chipping, but some of us haven’t your girth,” said Mr. Morton, a little nettled. He polished the bar aggressively.

“I meant, if you were going to hide up here on Mars,” said Mary. “Outside.”

“Oh! I’ve no idea,” said Mr. Morton, flicking away some crumbs of an unidentified fried substance.

“Cabes,” said Alf, through a mouthful of Proteus nuggets with gravy. “Dere’s caves round da side of da scarp, see? Old lava tubes or somefink. I found ’em dat time we was looking for Barry Rabinder, remember?
Dat big storm blew in off Amazonia and he went missing an hour out from Depot. I’m going along, I hears dis crunch and my wheel goes down—”

“Caves. Could you walk there, Mr. Chipping?”

“I could,” said Alf, mopping up gravy with a bit of roll. “Only why would I? It’s just some holes in da rock.” The Heretic wandered out of the kitchen with a small lump of something boiled and runny, and set it at Alf’s elbow.

“There’s your pudding,” she said. Then she trembled and in the hoarse other-person voice added, “
The gods look up and laugh. What you need is a hero.”

“Can you see the caves from here, Mr. Chipping?”

“Easy,” said Alf. He slid off his stool and masked up, and she followed him out through the lock to the Tube. He peered out through the vizio and pointed, at last, to a little rocky irregularity a few miles up-slope. “Dere.”