Old Mars Read online

  “Take you back to Cadrada.”

  I braced myself for resistance and fingered the little phial of amorphite in my pocket. It would knock her out immediately and keep her out for a while. But she perked up.

  “Good! We both gain, then. You’ll get your fee and I’ll get a traveling companion back to the palace.” She laughed at the expression on my face. “You don’t think I want to stay here, do you? Shut up in a stuffy tent until it’s time for me to be a broodmare, manipulated by my priestess aunt because of some moldy old prophecy? Or shut down in a wintering like this, not able to go out for a piss for six months because the cold freezes the snot in your nose, and living off dried ulsa meat? No thanks.” She paused. “I suppose this has occurred to you already, but the roles of women in this society really aren’t worth much, are they? When I was snatched from the Cold Deserts in the first place, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ve got opportunities in the palace. Clearly, Lord Halse wants me back, but in three or four years, I’ll be over the hill and too old for him. They’ll give me a pension—it’s happened to other women. Then I’ll set up my own place. I know several girls who’d be happy to work for me, and I’d have my own regular clients.” A meditative look entered her green eyes. “I fancy a place overlooking the Grand Canal—all those lovely gardens and a restaurant on every corner. I’ve got it all worked out.”

  “I see,” I said, faintly.

  “So.” Hafyre bounced up. “Shall we get going?”

  “We might as well,” I replied.

  I hoped Dair hadn’t come round by the time we left; it would save embarrassment, but the body sprawled in the dust had gone. That made me doubly eager to get going. He’d freed my tope, but the mount hadn’t gone far; after a moment of panic, I saw it trot nimbly down through the rocks with an air of affront. Hafyre had walked, apparently, since the edge of the mountains, and was more than happy to ride. All we had to do now was get out of the lands of the Tribes and head south.

  But, however conscious I was of the missing Dair, I still wasn’t paying quite enough attention.

  Once we’d come through the canyon, the stars were fully out, spreading a pallid light over the rocks. I saw the sorcerer from Ithness out of the corner of my eye, suddenly rearing up on the edge of a ledge, and Hafyre cried out as I toppled, paralyzed, from the tope and hit the ground for the second time that day. There I lay, while the sorcerer leaped from the rock as lightly as a bird and onto the back of my mount. Hafyre shrieked curses and went abruptly silent. They disappeared down the slope at a run.

  Some considerable time later, I became aware that a pair of boots had appeared in front of me.

  “Tut, tut,” said the voice of Nightwall Dair. “I see that the hand of immediate karma appears to have touched you. How ironic.” He bent down and touched something cold and damp to the side of my neck, and suddenly I could move again. “I really should try to get over these disastrous impulses toward compassion. Never does me any good … Especially after what happened earlier.” He helped me to my feet. His wrists were raw.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. I wouldn’t say that I felt abashed, precisely, but there was a slight element of the embarrassment I’d hoped to avoid earlier. Why I should have felt this way, I don’t know: It must have been a professional thing.

  “So, where is she? The girl?”

  “The sorcerer from Ithness took her.”

  Dair swore. “I thought so. Bastard. Are you on a finders’ fee?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “Yes, from a lord in Cadrada who took a fancy to her. One of Halse’s rivals. I know who you are now, by the way. A man named Thane. Or a woman named Peace. I recognize you from Halse’s palace. You were a dancer. Among, it seems, other things.”

  “I’m not sure it matters.”

  “We stand more chance of tracking her down together. I don’t need the hassle of your interference, and I know this sorcerer; we’ve got a history.”

  “Very generous of you. I know him, too. We have a history. You could, of course, just kill me.”

  Dair looked pained. “I don’t work that way. We can sort out the money later.”

  I knew that he had no intention of splitting it: He just wanted to keep an eye on me and perhaps get my help. But that was fine for the moment.

  With me up behind Dair on his black tope, we tracked them as far as the edge of the plain, then lost the trail. The tope stood, swinging its head in indecision. Since the sorcerer had stolen my mount, I wondered what he’d done with his own. Maybe the lizard-thing was still roaming around the place.

  “Might as well camp up for the night,” Dair said, philosophically.

  “I’m still not up for ‘companionship.’ ”

  “Now that I’ve found out you’re a woman, actually, neither am I.”

  We took turns keeping watch. It was a quiet enough night, although for a time I heard sounds out on the plain suggesting the Tribes were having another jamboree. Dair woke me at dawn, handed me a leather cup of tea, and told me that we were getting going. I was quick enough to agree. I wanted to get out of tribal lands, before the priestess—Hafyre’s aunt—discovered that we were still on her patch and sent her warriors out against us.

  We’d gone far enough west already that by the time evening fell, we were back in Scarlight, and I was surprised to find how much I’d missed the place. At least, compared to the Cold Deserts.

  We found a bar to sit out the early evening in a corner booth. I thought that the sorcerer, having presumably dealt with Hafyre’s aunt, might come back through Scarlight. If he still lived. Whatever the case, I was resigned to Hafyre’s loss. But by that time, I was also looking forward to a sweat lodge, and wine.

  “You’re quite attractive now you’re not covered in filth,” Dair said when I reappeared. I gritted my teeth. I was likely to get more attention as Zuneida than I had as the anonymous Thane, so I’d kept the mask on, rendering his remark even more irritating.

  “I thought you didn’t like women.”

  “I like some women. Just not for sex.” He glanced around at the men in the bar.

  “Trust me, that’s refreshing.”

  “So,” Dair said, primly. He poured me a glass of Ylltian white and watched as I took a sip. If he’d been going to poison me, I thought, he’d have done so earlier. “You’ve had a varied career.”

  “You noticed.”

  “Whereas I’m more single-track. I’ve always been a bounty hunter, ever since I was a young man. Followed in my uncle’s footsteps.”

  “You’re from Cadrada?”

  “I’m from a lot of places. I was born in a desert village. Didn’t have a name, it was too little. I got out on a barge down the Grand Canal and never went back. You?”

  “Cadrada, but I don’t know who my parents were. Brought up on the edge of the court, by a variety of people, then into the temple as a dancer. They used me to seduce visiting aristocracy. Reliable enough work.” And it paid for my poetry, but I didn’t really want to tell Dair that; I thought it might make me seem less threatening.

  “Easier than bounty hunting.”

  “Only sometimes. Anyway, I wanted to travel.” I was trying to be philosophical about Hafyre’s loss, and failing. This is why one should never mix business and personal matters.

  Dair was scanning the room behind me; he’d seen something, but I didn’t want to draw attention by looking round. “I can understand that.”

  “This is decent wine,” I said, loudly. “Want some more?”

  His eyes remained on the back of the room. “Whatever you say, my friend.” His free hand traced a couple of sigils on the tabletop: northwest, leaving. Then he stood. “There’s a back way out behind the kitchen.”

  So that was the way I took, while Dair went out the front. I passed a greasy scullery and someone washing pans; she did not look up. The staff were probably used to it. I sped through an alley, seeing no one, and met Dair again outside the bar, standing in the shadows.

>   “They’re here. The sorcerer is, anyway.”

  “Did you see her? Why would he have brought her back here and not to the Tribes?”

  “I don’t know. Negotiating on neutral ground? Or maybe he thinks it’s safer now that he’s found out we’re on the scene. I only saw him. I don’t think he saw us, though. But I can’t be sure.”

  “Did you see where he went?”

  “No.”

  “I want my tope back,” I told him. A quick trip round the town’s stables seemed in order, and, in the second, belonging to one of the cheaper guesthouses, we found my mount. He bellowed a welcome when he saw me, looking up from his steaming bucket of entrails and enveloping me in a blast of fetid breath. Dair said that he thought it was sweet. I did not bother to reply. We took the back stairs, weapons at the ready. Dair took a phial from his pocket, broke off the top, and threw it into the corner; after a moment, smoke billowed out, seeping under the doors.

  “Fire!” Dair shouted, with a convincing note of panic.

  We waited until there were a series of gratifying cries and people in various stages of undress bolted forth. At the far end of the hall, however, a door remained firmly closed. I ran through the clouds of smoke and kicked it in.

  The sorcerer was standing by the window, in the act of throwing open the shutters.

  Hafyre cried out, muffled by a gag. Her hands were tied behind her back. I sliced through the bonds while Dair fired a bolt at the sorcerer, who flung himself to one side. I stood up to get a clear shot with the barb gun, aiming at the sorcerer’s face, but at that moment the room crackled with the cast of a spell.

  I felt it hit me, and it felt as though it should have brought me down, but it broke over me like a fiery wave and was gone. There was a cry of fury and I turned to see the priestess, Hafyre’s aunt, standing in the doorway. Her hand was outstretched; her face, bewildered. The sorcerer gave a sudden caw of laughter.

  “That’s the trouble with women’s spells!”

  My magic can fry any man at seven paces. Being a poet, I really should pay more attention to figures of speech, especially in other people’s languages.

  The sorcerer flung out a hand of his own. Dair tackled me low, clutching me around the waist and bringing me to the floor.

  The bolts shot over my head like twin comets: one green and one blue. There was a sharp cry, a curse from Hafyre, then the ringing silence that follows concussive-weapons fire. The pressure of Dair’s body on mine was abruptly released. He pulled me to my feet. A scorched outline against the opposite wall was all that remained of the sorcerer: Evidently rage had lent force to that particular spell. In the doorway, the body of the Ynar priestess, Hafyre’s aunt, had slumped lifelessly to the floor. And a window banging against its own shutters was the only trace of Hafyre herself.

  She’d stolen my tope, we discovered shortly. But there were no prizes for guessing where she was headed: Cadrada, decent restaurants, and a lifetime of business opportunities. We could have gone after her, but I couldn’t help feeling that she deserved to have a free run.

  Later, though—later I would return to Cadrada. Maybe with money in my pocket. The hope in my heart was already there, however misplaced.

  Aloud, I said I thought that she was more trouble than she was worth. So Dair and I split the proceeds along gender lines: He took the sorcerer’s cash bag and poison store, while I stripped the priestess’s body of her coin belt and the wealth-beads in her hair. Then we dumped her body in the Yss and gave the guesthouse proprietor a bit over the cost of the room to keep her quiet. Even with this unexpected expense, over another bottle of Ylltian white, we calculated that we’d made slightly more than the finders’ fees.

  “Of course,” Dair said sourly, a couple of hours later, “failure’s not good for the reputation.”

  “True. But at least we don’t have to go all the way back to Cadrada empty-handed. Although I don’t think that the north is a very healthy place to be anymore.” I was remembering the priestess’s warriors. Dair turned the glass in his fingers.

  “I was thinking of Yllt. Lovely at this time of year. And they do make a nice wine.”

  I smiled.

  “Do you want a companion for the ride?”

  “Not fussy, are you? Although I’m reminded that you no longer have a mount.”

  And so the next morning I once more rode out of Scarlight, on Dair’s black tope, with the Jharain wind at my back, money in my pocket, and the vision of a girl’s face before me, her eyes the color of forests.

  HOWARD WALDROP

  Howard Waldrop is widely considered to be one of the best short-story writers in the business, having been called “the resident Weird Mind of our generation” and an author “who writes like [a] honkytonk angel.” His famous story “The Ugly Chickens” won both the Nebula and the World Fantasy Awards in 1981. His work has been gathered in the collections: Howard Who?, All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past: Neat Stories by Howard Waldrop, Night of the Cooters: More Neat Stories by Howard Waldrop, Going Home Again, the print version of his collection Dream Factories and Radio Pictures (formerly available only in downloadable form online), and a collection of his stories written in collaboration with various other authors, Custer’s Last Jump and Other Collaborations. Waldrop is also the author of the novel The Texas-Israeli War: 1999, in collaboration with Jake Saunders, and of two solo novels, Them Bones and A Dozen Tough Jobs, as well as the chapbook A Better World’s in Birth! He is at work on a new novel, tentatively titled The Moone World. His most recent book is a big retrospective collection, Things Will Never Be the Same: Selected Short Fiction 1980–2005. Having lived in Washington State for a number of years, Waldrop recently moved back to his former hometown of Austin, Texas, something that caused celebrations and loud hurrahs to rise up from the population.

  Historical re-creations are popular on Earth, with thousands reenacting Civil War battles and scenes from other conflicts, but here Waldrop shows us a historical re-creation taking place on Mars, one that takes us on a voyage on a historically accurate reconstruction of a slimshang out across the Martian deserts to the source of all life itself.

  The Dead Sea-Bottom Scrolls

  (A Re-creation of Oud’s Journey by Slimshang from Tharsis to Solis Lacus, by George Weeton, Fourth Mars Settlement Wave, 1981)

  HOWARD WALDROP

  SO I AM STANDING HERE ON A COLD MORNING, BESIDE THE best approximation of a slimshang of which Terran science is capable—polycarbonates and (Earth) man-made fabrics instead of the original hardened plant fibers and outer coverings of animals long extinct. It looks fast, probably faster than any native-made slimshang, but it will have to do.

  One thing it’s missing is the series of gears, cogs, plates, and knobs with which a sort of music was made as it rolled. Martians spoke of “coming at full melody”—since the reproduction was mechanical, like a music box, the faster the slimshang went, the louder and more rackety the tune.

  Instead, I have a tape deck with me, on which I have chosen to put an endless loop of the early-1960s tune “The Martian Hop.”

  It’s appropriate and fitting.

  What I am doing is to set out in the re-created slimshang to follow the route (if not the incidents and feelings) of Oud’s famous journey from Tharsis to Solis Lacus.

  It’s the most famous Martian travelogue we have (for many and varying reasons).

  Oud was the first thinking commentator on the changes Mars was undergoing in his (long) lifetime. Others had noted the transformation, but not the underlying processes. And Oud’s personal experiences added much to the classic stature of his tale.

  So on this cold morning at Settlement #6 (vying, like many, for the AAS to officially rechristen it Lowell City), I shook hands with the three people who had come outside the temporary bubble dome to see me off.

  We stood exchanging small talk for a few minutes, then Oud’s words came to me: “A Being has to do what a Being has to do.”

  So I climbed into my
high-tech slimshang, up-sailed, waved to the others (who were already heading back for the haven of air they could breathe), and set my course west, playing “The Martian Hop” as I jumped some scattered pinkish dunes.

  Think of Oud as a Martian Windwagon Smith.

  He set out from Tharsis (on the old volcanic shield) toward Solis Lacus (the site of some till-then-inexact place of cultural revelation), and recorded what would have been to other Martians a pleasant (as we understand it) few-days jaunt in the equivalent of a hot-rod windwagon (which most slimshangs were, and Oud’s definitely was; I’m assuming that his approached mine in elegance, if not materials).

  That Oud started in winter was unusual. The weather was colder and the winds less predictable then, given to frequent planet-girdling dust storms. Winter and spring trips were not unknown, but most were taken in mid–Martian summer, when temperatures sometimes rose to the low forties Fahrenheit.

  This tradition was left over from an earlier Mars (along with cultural patterns and the development of the slimshang). No one thought to do it any other way.

  The Martians were nothing if not a tradition-bound species. But there’s a lot to be said for customs that get you through 10 or 15 million years (the jury is still out).

  I’m sure, in the future, someone will read my retracing of Oud’s journey and point out the know-it-allness of earlier humans jumping in with inexact knowledge and pronouncements of age off by factors of three or four, and will comment on them in footnotes.1

  From Oud: “Weather fine (for the time of year). Not much debris, sands fairly smooth and sessile. Skirted two or three eroded gullies. Smooth running till dark. Saw one other being all day, walking, near an aboveground single habitation. Pulled slimshang over at dark and buttoned up for the night. Very comfortable.”2