Old Mars Read online

  Only Sharp-edge-alert pushed his hands into Maartin, and Maartin never saw him do that to any of the people.

  The human residents mostly left him alone, although Seaul Ku, who weeded there a lot, too, sometimes talked to him. But even she did the slow-talk thing and used baby words. So he didn’t try too hard to talk back, kept his fingers working in the soil. She wasn’t there the afternoon that Jorge came to the gardens.

  He looked old. Maartin straightened to his knees, his fingers asking what was wrong, scattering soil crumbs across his thighs.

  “What are they?” Jorge squatted to face him. “What are the people you see if they’re not ghosts?”

  His fingers danced, explaining. He shook his head. Groping for words. They were getting harder to find. “They … are … the pearls.” Inadequate. “Like … like …” He thought hard, running through all the earth-things he’d learned. “Projector? Storage? They … live … forever. Until the sun … eats the planet.” Gave up, slumping, his fingers snapping and weaving his frustration in the air between them.

  Jorge was staring at them. “Live forever?” He shook his head. “They can’t be alive. Like you said, they’re images. Ghosts. Not real. The pearls are rocks.” He lifted his head to meet Maartin’s eyes.

  He wanted Maartin to say yes. Wanted it a lot. Maartin shook his head. He studied the explanation as his fingers rippled and twined it in the air. “Spectrum.” That was close. “Energy?” Not quite. “Different spectrum. They live.”

  Jorge closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the hope was gone. “Cory and Bantu have been scratching around here when nobody was watching.” His voice was hoarse. “Your settlement is sitting on a shoal.”

  Maartin didn’t bother to nod. Sharp-edge-alert had drifted up behind him. It occurred to Maartin that Sharp-edge-alert always seemed to be close by.

  “I’m …” Jorge sucked in a ragged breath. “I’m going to warn your mayor. To leave. Just clear out of here. The settlement. I’ve … you can’t talk to them. It’s all about … going home. Like I told you.”

  They would destroy the settlement, the way they’d destroyed the other one. Worse, because the shoal was beneath them, not up in the rocks above. He closed his eyes, imagining the mayor, his father, when the big earth-chewers rolled up to the gardens. “The mayor … will call the Planetary Council.” Maartin groped for the words, forced them out. “They’ll help.”

  “No, they won’t.” Jorge shook his head, looked away. “We got better weapons and they know it. We’ll pay off the people who need paying off—you can do that when you’ve got a shoal’s worth of pearls. Everybody wants them, Maartin.” His voice was harsh. “Everybody. You better ask your Martian buddies to defend you if you want to stay here.” His laugh came out as bitter as the bleakness in his eyes. “Nobody else is gonna do it. Come on.” He grabbed Maartin’s arm. “I gotta get back before they suspect I came over here to warn you, or I’m dead meat.”

  “You’ll kill …” His fingers writhed outrage. “You’ll kill … the city.”

  “The settlement, you mean? Not if you guys don’t fight back.” Jorge was dragging him along the path now, toward the exit lock.

  He didn’t mean the settlement. Sharp-edge-alert drifted along behind.

  Anger.

  And then he left, loping across the pastel tiles. Everybody in the plaza stopped and turned toward him. The water in the fountains subsided into low, burbling mounds and the mists drifting from the pipes turned an ugly shade of brownish green. Cold sweat broke out on Maartin’s skin, and he thought he was going to faint as Jorge yanked him into the lock and closed the inner door.

  They found the mayor at Canny’s. Maartin hadn’t realized how late it was; the sun was sinking into the red crags beyond the city and the canal. Most people were there. Dad was leaning on the barplank, and he looked about as old as Jorge. Maartin hadn’t noticed it before. There was a lot of gray in his hair now. A crowd of people streamed through the room, heading toward the canal, slipping through the settlers, through the walls, hurrying. He’d never seen one of the people hurry. Maartin peered after them, the anger-hum intensifying steadily, making his bones ache.

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  The mayor’s angry bellow yanked Maartin’s attention back to the room. Jorge stepped away from him as the settlers gathered to face him, eyes hard, mouths grim. The people streamed through them, more of them now. Maartin doubled over with the pain of the anger-howl. Jorge retreated a step. “There’s nothing you can do.” He spread his hands. “You fire a shot at them, they’ll raze this settlement. Get your stuff and get out now and we’ll try not to damage too much.”

  “You do that and the Planetary Council will issue death warrants in a heartbeat.” The mayor stepped forward, chin out. “You’ll all die.”

  “You think so?” Jorge stopped retreating, his eyes as bleak as they had been in the garden dome. “I lied to you.” He was speaking to Maartin now, only to Maartin. “I was there, I was part of the crew that brought the rock down on the settlement over near First Down. I … knew what they were gonna do. I just quit, walked away. But I didn’t warn the settlers. I … I’m sorry.” His eyes were dark as night. “I’m sorry, Maartin.” He faced the mayor again. “Every one of those men got a death warrant. Every one went home. Rich.” His voice grated, harsh and loud, in the sudden silence. “You got real pearl-money, the death warrant gets kind of delayed. Until the next ship leaves. Got it?”

  “Paul, get the rifles. We’ve got twelve in the vault in my office.” The mayor blocked Jorge as he edged toward the door. “Grab him.”

  Jorge lunged, went down with a half dozen settlers on his back. Somebody shoved through the crowd with restraints from the little jail room behind the mayor’s office and they strapped his hands behind him, feet together.

  “You’re not going to stop ’em.” Jorge shouted the words, his mouth bloody. “You don’t have to die! Just get out! They’ll pay damages after, if you don’t scream to the Council.”

  “Fifteen years.” The mayor stood over him, fists at his side. “We’ve been culturing those cyan beds for fifteen years! And you’re just gonna plow ’em all up? And then go home? We can’t go home, and we want to breathe.” He kicked Jorge in the side. “Let’s go!” He turned, grabbed a projectile rifle from someone behind him. “They’re gonna pay for this! We’ll spread out, take cover, and drop a hell of a lot of ’em, soon as they come in range.”

  “You do that, and they’ll kill every last one of you!” Jorge yelled from the floor. “There won’t be anything left here!”

  Nobody listened.

  “Come on, Maartin.” Dad grabbed his arm. “I can’t leave you here. God knows what they’ll do when we start shooting. Stay close!” He dragged Maartin along with the settlers pressing through the door, grabbing breathers.

  Dad was scared. His whole body shivered with it.

  Wait, wait, wait, don’t go, don’t go that way! His fingers snapped with urgency, but Dad didn’t look, didn’t notice. “No!” He finally forced the word out. “Wait!”

  “We can’t wait, son. It’ll be too late.” Dad wasn’t speaking slow, wasn’t really paying attention as he dragged Maartin along.

  No one would pay attention. The anger-hum was squeezing his brain, his organs. The plaza was undulating under his feet so that he stumbled, and Dad lost his grip on his arm. He yelled, trying to turn back, but the press of settlers swept him on. The others pounded past him, ignoring him. The spires swayed with the anger and the spiderways shivered; clouds of silvery sparks spouted from the columns in the now-dry fountain, hissing and crackling with an ugly sound.

  Dad and the mayor and Celie and all the others were way ahead of him now. He cut right, following his shortcut to the canal. That was the way they’d come. He could get there first. His teeth felt as if they were loosening in their sockets and he clenched them, leaning against the anger-hum, homing in on it.

  The people stood in a grace
ful, curving line, hes and shes, facing the oncoming rumble of the earth-eaters. The machines wallowed along on their heavy treads, churning up clouds of red dust, open maws like fanged mouths ready to suck in red dirt and rock, sieve out the pearls, the city. They rumbled through spires and a landscaped garden of paths and sculpted shrubs surrounded by flocks of creeping plants with purple and silvery blossoms.

  The tread didn’t harm the plants or the paths. Not yet.

  Not until they started digging up the pearls.

  They couldn’t see the people. Neither could Dad. Or the mayor.

  The anger formed like milky clouds over the heads of the people, thickening as he watched, a pale fabric that floated above them, a sickly color. They raised their hands, all together, fingers weaving, shaping, twining the scalding energy of the anger into that thickening fabric. Some were turning to face Dad and the mayor. Celie was marching along beside Dad, and, behind her, Seaul Ku panted to keep up. She carried one of the projectile rifles. A small part of Maartin’s brain noticed it and was surprised.

  He leaped in front of the people, hands in the air, shrieking to them, fingers wide, hands waving. Not them. They are not bad. You do not understand. We are not the same.

  At first, he thought that none of them would look, but they did. The weaving and spinning slowed and the fingers flickered sharply.

  Defective. Defective units.

  Not bad, no harm, we live here, too. They do not. And Maartin flung his fingers out to point at the miners, saw a faint ripple of shock at his terrible rudeness. But most of the fingers snapped and flickered discussion, too fast for him to follow, flashing and twisting.

  Sharp-edge-alert brought his hands down in a slashing gesture, faced the miners. Maartin spun to face the settlers. “Stand back!” The air words came to him, his fingers spread stiff and still, silent, in front of him. “Stand back, the people are going to destroy the miners.”

  At first, he thought they’d ignore him, although he saw Dad’s eyes go wide. Then they halted, murmuring, and fear shrilled the murmur, brought their hands up, pointing crudely.

  He turned.

  As one, the people pulled the woven fabric of the anger-hum from the air and …

  … tossed it.

  Lightly.

  It drifted over the oncoming machines, over the miners trudging purposefully along on either side with energy weapons in their hands. Settled lightly, gently, over them.

  They began to scream, backs arching, breathers ripped from their faces as they convulsed, limbs spasming, flopping like the pictures of fish that Maartin had seen on vids, pulled out onto a riverbank to die. The sickly veil dissipated, leaving twitching bodies and machines that lumbered slowly forward. One of the big earth-chewers ran over a body, grinding the man’s torso into the dust.

  “Holy crap!” The mayor’s harsh voice rose above the machine rumble. “What the hell happened?”

  “Get the machines stopped.” Dad ran forward, grabbed a handhold, and swung into the seat of the lead earth-chewer. He fumbled for a moment or two and it stopped, tracks grinding to a halt. Dad leaped clear as the machine behind it ground into it, slewing it sideways.

  The mayor leaped onto that one, and now everybody was running—toward the machines or to the fallen miners or back to the settlement. In a few moments, all the machines had been stopped. None of the miners were moving. Settlers were standing up, shaking their heads, their eyes scared, faces pale.

  “My God, storm …” “Dust devils …” “Nasty little twisters …” “Like little tornadoes, like they were … attacking …”

  The settlers were all looking at Maartin.

  The people were drifting away, heading back to the plaza or stepping up onto the spiderways. A few strolled in the garden and one man played a trio of twisted purple tubes that drifted lavender mist streaked with silver into the air.

  “What did you do, son?” Dad’s voice was hushed.

  They had gathered in a semicircle between him and the settlement. Scared of him. Looking around. For more dust devils? Maartin faced them, the air words playing hide-and-seek, his fingers weaving an explanation, flickering and twining.

  “He sees the Martians. They live here. Right where your settlement is.” Jorge panted up, his wrists welted angry red from the too-tight restraints. “I can see ’em just a little when I hold a pearl. I guess they … they killed the crew.” He swallowed. “I … did you tell them not to kill us, too, Maartin?”

  He flickered affirmative. Gave up on the air words.

  “I think he means ‘yes.’ ” Jorge stayed back with the crowd, didn’t get too close to him. “I … I caught a few glimpses.”

  Everybody wanted to know about the Martians. They asked him questions for a while but gave up when only his fingers explained, talked to Jorge instead. Jorge got things wrong, but Maartin didn’t bother to try to correct him. Dad put an arm around his shoulders and led him away, back to their rooms. Dad asked questions too, but Maartin kept his hands clasped, and, after a while, Dad stopped asking.

  They reported the incident to the Planetary Council, and a few people came out. They listened, shook their heads at the evolving interpretation of hidden Martians and long-range energy weapons, and, for a while, everybody was afraid, looking out at the hills as they walked through the strolling musicians on the plaza or through the lower curves of the spiderways.

  They were afraid of him, too, but that was actually better than before, since they no longer led him home when the plaza and the walls got tangled up and he walked into something.

  And, after a while, they stopped looking for Martians they couldn’t see, and they stopped being afraid of him. The abandoned machines got hauled away and settlers grumbled in Canny’s that the settlement should have been able to claim salvage rights, not the Council. And they went back to planting new cyan beds, and Dad started talking about smelling the oxygen again.

  Mostly, Maartin weeded the garden because he liked the smell and feel of the soil, and Seaul Ku had decided he was still the same old Maartin, and he liked that, too. And when he got tired, he strolled in the plaza with Soft-sweet-happy or Firm-thoughtful. Sharp-edge-alert didn’t follow him anymore; he hadn’t seen him since the attack on the miners.

  One day, Jorge came into the garden. He’d been working with Dad planting the new bed and had rented a room a few doors down from Canny’s. He squatted down in front of Maartin. “I’m leaving. Gotta stakeholder grant in a new one just going in, over a day’s ride south of City.” His dark eyes held Maartin’s. “I can’t mine anymore.” He fumbled in his pocket, drew out his pearl. “I need to put this back. Where does it go?”

  He reached for it and lifted it from Jorge’s palm before he could pull it away. Soft-sweet-happy was crossing the plaza and he called her over with a flick of his fingers, offered it to her. She touched it, vanished it back to its place, and smiled as they both felt the tiny ripple of its return.

  “What did you just do?” Jorge was staring at his empty palm. He raised his head. “I hope you’re happy.” He said it softly. “I hope they’re friends with you.”

  Pity, Maartin thought. Did he need pity? He thought about it. What needed pity was gone, he decided. His fingers flashed and flickered as he told Jorge about how, even now, his every action, every vibration of every molecule in his flesh was feeding into … a pearl. He would stroll this plaza, share the mist-music, wander the cities and spiderways forever, once it was done.

  No. No pity.

  “We. Will. Protect.” He managed to find those three words.

  Watched the fear creep back into Jorge’s eyes. “The story’s got around among the miners.” He expelled the breath-words on harsh puffs of air. “But stories get ignored. When there’s money.”

  Maartin shrugged. Sharp-edge-alert had learned what he needed to know. About imperfect units.

  Jorge headed for the lock, taking his fear with him.

  It did not matter. The transfer completed.

  He
stood, stretched, and strolled through the dome and across the plaza, savoring the drift of mist from the fountain, heading for the spiderway where Soft-sweet-happy flickered him a greeting.

  No longer imperfect.

  Behind him, very faintly, he heard the harsh sound of breath-words.

  MIKE RESNICK

  Mike Resnick is one of the best-selling authors in science fiction, and one of the most prolific. His many novels include Kirinyaga, Santiago, The Dark Lady, Stalking the Unicorn, Birthright: The Book of Man, Paradise, Ivory, Soothsayer, Oracle, Lucifer Jones, Purgatory, Inferno, A Miracle of Rare Design, The Widowmaker, The Soul Eater, A Hunger in the Soul, The Return of Santiago, Starship: Mercenary, Starship: Rebel, and Stalking the Vampire. His collections include Will the Last Person to Leave the Planet Please Shut Off the Sun?, An Alien Land, A Safari of the Mind, Hunting the Snark and Other Stories, and The Other Teddy Roosevelts. As editor, he’s produced Inside the Funhouse: 17 SF stories about SF, Whatdunnits, More Whatdunnits, Shaggy B.E.M. Stories, New Voices in Science Fiction, This Is My Funniest, a long string of anthologies coedited with Martin H. Greenberg—Alternate Presidents, Alternate Kennedys, Alternate Warriors, Aladdin: Master of the Lamp, Dinosaur Fantastic, By Any Other Fame, Alternate Outlaws, and Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, among others—as well as two anthologies coedited with Gardner Dozois, and Stars: Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian, edited with Janis Ian. He won the Hugo Award in 1989 for Kirinyaga. He won another Hugo Award in 1991 for another story in the Kirinyaga series, “The Manamouki,” and another Hugo and Nebula in 1995 for his novella “Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge.” His most recent books are a number of new collections, The Incarceration of Captain Nebula and Other Lost Futures, Win Some, Lose Some: The Complete Hugo-Nominated Short Fiction of Mike Resnick, and Masters of the Galaxy, and a new novel, The Doctor and the Rough Rider. He lives with his wife, Carol, in Cincinnati, Ohio.