Old Mars Read online

  He should have seen the place today. I had to dodge erratic rocks the size of railroad freight cars, and the two or three eroded gulleys now look like the Channeled Scablands of the northwest United States.

  Oud lived, we think, at the start of the Great Bombardment (see later), before the largest of the geologic upheavals, the rise of the shield volcanoes and the great asteroid impacts that released untold amounts of suddenly boiling permafrost and loosed water vapor and pyroclastic flows that changed the even-then-ever-changing face of Mars.

  After the now-eroded features of my first day’s route, I was slowing myself where necessary to cover exactly the same distances as Oud: Only once in the whole trip had Oud’s slimshang, which must really have been something, made better time than mine through (in his day) worse terrain. Give or take a boulder the size of an Airstream trailer, the ground was a gradual slope off the Tharsis plateau.

  I settled in for the night, calling in my position to Mars Central, watched the sunset (which comes fast in these parts), and saw one of the hurtling moons of Mars hurtle by. Then, like Oud, millennia before, I went to sleep.

  Day 2:

  OUD, ON HIS ORIGINAL ROUTE, COMMENTED THAT, IN FORMER days, slimshangs had made part of this day’s journey by “otherwise”—i.e., water. He dismissed how easy such an old journey must have been—on land, water for most of the day, then back to land.

  Oud (and I) had to make our way around more dried channels. In Oud’s time, some still contained surface ice, as opposed to the open-water lakes they must have been in Oud’s ancestors’ times. Now not even ice remains, sublimated into the air. Just old worn watercourses, which made today’s trip a tough mother. I thought once I might have damaged a wheel (I have spares, but changing one out is not easy), but had only picked up a small, persistent rock.

  Oud was one of the first to notice that the air was getting thinner. Others had seen the effects but had attributed it to other causes. The loss of water was one. Slimshang sails had once been small affairs: By Oud’s time, they were twice as large—my reproduction is 7/10 sail and sometimes that’s not enough.

  It was also on this second day that Oud saw an asteroid hit in the distance.

  From Oud: “A sudden plume of dust and steam on the horizon that rose a cretop (five miles) high. Much scattering of debris. Had to trim the slimshang close-to to avoid falling boulders and navigate carefully around many more. The cloud hung in the air till sundown, and probably after.”

  My present course shows some remnants of Oud’s event and later ones, including a string of frosted craters off to my right. There are also a couple of shield craters or later volcanic (still active) cones that followed on that cataclysm.

  The navigating was even dicier than Oud’s had been.

  Some idea of the upheavals of Oud’s time may be gained by his referral (in an earlier narrative) to what is now Olympia Mons as “the new hill.”

  So on went Oud on his winter journey, unconcerned by small things like the sky falling and mountains building on the horizon line.

  It’s only an accident of sound that Oud’s name is the same as the English one for a Turkish mandolin. (I believe there is an album called The Kings of the Oud on Oud, put out by Picwick Records, supposedly music inspired by Oud’s journey, done by a bunch of studio musicians, rumored to have included Lou Reed and Glen Campbell, among others. I have never heard it: People who have said that it was “pretty uninspired by anything.”)

  The third day of both our journeys was fairly downhill, uneventful, and of no great consequence. Night was the same. Oud did not even mention it.

  The fourth day, I had some trouble with the rigging of the slimshang. Oud had troubles of a differing kind.

  His narrative is deceptive. After complaining about the low quality of the foodstuffs he could find for his breakfast (he had noticed the decline in traditional plant life from his ancestors’ time earlier in the narrative), and speculating about his probably paltry lunch (“slim mossings” is the phrase he used), a few hours into the day comes the line, “If I didn’t know better, and this wasn’t winter season, I would think I was undergoing grexagging.”

  Well. I wasn’t undergoing grexagging (no human ever had), but I was having the devil’s own time getting over a series of long gullies without my sail luffing. I resorted to the last ignominy of slimshanging: I got out and pushed.

  Eventually, I gained height and wind simultaneously and made off at a fast clip, Solis Lacusward.

  I had left Oud in his travels sure that he was not undergoing grexagging. After some more navigational and observational entries, his next sentence may take the reader by surprise.

  “Bud has the tiller now. Since he knows almost everything I know, but is only just learning to use his pseudopodia, I let him learn by experience what a glorious thing a slimshang is, but also how ungainly it can become in seconds.”

  Bud? asks the reader. Bud? Who is this? Where did he come from?

  Oud cannot resist his little joke:

  “I watch him clumsily take us around boulders and over dunes. I see how his movements and coordination become smoother and more assured as time—and miles—pass. He reminds me of myself when younger.”

  Of course he did. Oud had undergone grexagging (meiosis). Bud was a younger Oud.

  This is the only time in Martian literature that a narrator has grexagged in the course of an ongoing narrative. Grexagging usually took place in one’s domicile, attended by nest-brothers, and was celebrated with ritual exchanges of foodstuffs, chattel, and good wishes. Grexagging usually occurred in the spring or summer season, foretold by mood swings, dietary changes, and agrophobia.

  It had happened to Oud in the winter, with no presaging except the slimshang wanderlust. He must have attributed his body’s stirrings to that, sublimating the others.

  Scientist to the end, he described his changes: “I have less weight than in 393rd year. To think I grexagged at such an advanced age, with no forewarnings, and in the winter season, is as surprising to me as anyone.

  “It is said that Flimo of the (Syrtis Major) nest had an off-bud at 419 years, but that it was unviable and was ritually eaten at the Festival of Foregiving, and the nest stayed away for the customary year before being allowed to attend the next All-Nest Convention.

  “Bud looks viable to me—in the last few hours, his handling of the slimshang has grown as assured as that of someone who’d been doing it for a century or so.

  “We run now at full jangle across the flat of the former sea-bottom that stretches toward (Solis Lacus). It does a Being good to watch his bud-descendant proud and confident at the tiller of his slimshang.”

  It’s still debated (especially by us first wave of humans on Mars) what event it was that took place at the cultural shrine toward which Oud and Bud made their way.

  Before Oud, the literature was conflicting and rather noninformative. (On Earth, when anthropologists can’t find instant meaning in any cultural artifact, they say, “This obviously had deep religious significance.”)

  What had happened in the dim Martian past? we asked, before Oud’s manuscript was unearthed. Was there some Fatima- or Lourdes-type event? Was it a recurring event and ritual, a Martian Eleusinian Mystery? Rather than either, it appeared to have been a singular event, so important that its effects lasted for several million years. Whatever it was, it must have been a doozy. No Being ever really talked about it before Oud. It seemed to be part of them, a piece of general knowledge, perhaps as known to Bud a few hours after his off-budding as to Oud after his 394 years.

  So onward they went toward Solis Lacus; so onward I followed them (some three hundred thousand to four hundred thousand years later), me happy in the long-gone companions of the journey; Oud proud of his new offspring; Bud probably hooting from the sheer joy of being alive and at the tiller of a fine slimshang, on a dying planet that was losing its oxygen, its water, and its heat.

  “As with all nest-fathers,” says Oud, “I instructed
Bud on how to more efficiently rid himself of his waste products on waking in the morning and how to use his haze-eyes to better see distant objects. He only took a few minutes to learn those skills that would last him a lifetime.”

  Now Oud the scientist takes over the narrative:

  “I notice that for the past two days we have had only dry snow (carbon dioxide frost), with only a few patches of real snow here and there. Not like in our ancestors’ time, when dry snow was the rarity.”

  His (and their, and my) next day of the trip would bring us to our goal—changed though it was since their time.

  On old maps of Mars, Solis Lacus (The Lake of the Sun) was a bright circular feature in the midst of a darker area, thought at the time to be an irrigated, heavily vegetated patch, with the stark circularity of Solis Lacus in its midst.

  We now know that the dark part was heavy volcanic dust and ash and the bright roundness a raised area swept by winds and kept clear.

  In Oud’s time, it was a long fold of the edge of the old bottom of a remnant sea, like prehistoric Lake Bonneville on Earth. As they rolled toward it, Oud said, “Ancestors described the wonder and majesty of (Old Bitter Sea) with its rolled margin of amaranth and turquoise gleaming in the sunset after a long day’s slimshanging. Now it’s an almost featureless rise of the landscape, hardly worth a second two-looks.”

  Oud reefed his sail as they slid out onto the brightness of the middle of Solis Lacus.

  Bud said, “It is quiet here, Father.”

  “Indeed,” said Oud, “for here is where it started.”

  “Were you born here, Father?”

  Oud looked around.

  “We were all born here,” said Oud. He pointed to the raised lump in the cold distance. “That is where the Life-Rock fell from the sky. From where we, and all living things, come. In the ancestors’ days, we returned each year for the Festival of Wow, to appreciate that, and to think and wonder on its happening. It must have been something, then, all the nests gathered, all hooting and racket, such music as they had.”

  “Are you sad, Father?” asked Bud.

  “Sadness is for those who have personally lost something,” said Oud. “How can I be sad? I have made a fine journey in a good slimshang, in the low season. I have arrived at the place of our First-Birth. And I have a new bud-son who will live to see other wonders on this elder twilight world. How could I be sad?”

  “Thank you for bringing me here,” said Bud.

  “No,” said Oud, “thank you.”

  Weeton here again. We leave Bud and Oud in a sort of valetudinarian idyll (I like to think), staring into the setting sun with Solis Lacus around them, and Thyle I and II far away.

  Meanwhile, I’m out here on this empty rise where the edge of a sea once rolled, trying to find what is dragging on my retro-slimshang. The sun is setting here, probably adding to my anthropomorphization of those two Martians now dead four hundred thousand years.

  After exploring the Life-Rock for a day (“If you’ve seen one rock, you’ve seen them all”—Oud), his narrative ends two days into the return journey back to Tharsis.

  Oud, as far as we can find so far, never wrote another word.

  Bud, except for his appearance in Oud’s narrative, is unknown to history or Martian literature.

  I hope, so far as I’m able, that they lived satisfying, productive Martian lives.

  We’ll never know. While Mars and the Martians were dying, we were still looking up, grunting, out of the caves, at the pretty red dot in the sky.

  * * *

  1 Well put. Weeton’s guess was fairly accurate, one of the few times early colonists and philologists were. Other places, he’s less reliable.

  2 Elenkua N’Kuba, ed. Weeton’s Oud Narrative: A facsimile reproduction. Elsevier, the Hague: 2231.

  JAMES S. A. COREY

  James S. A. Corey is the pseudonym of two young writers working together, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Their first novel as Corey, the wide-screen space opera Leviathan Wakes, the first in the Expanse series, was released in 2010 to wide acclaim, and was followed in 2012 with a new Expanse novel, Caliban’s War. Coming up is another Expanse novel, Abaddon’s Gate.

  Daniel Abraham lives with his wife in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he is director of technical support at a local Internet service provider. Starting off his career in short fiction, he made sales to Asimov’s Science Fiction, SCI FICTION, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, The Infinite Matrix, Vanishing Acts, The Silver Web, Bones of the World, The Dark, Wild Cards, and elsewhere, some of which appeared in his first collection, Leviathan Wept and Other Stories. Turning to novels, he made several sales in rapid succession, including the books of The Long Price Quartet, which consist of A Shadow in Summer, A Betrayal in Winter, An Autumn War, and The Price of Spring. At the moment, he’s published the first two volumes in his new series, The Dagger and the Coin, which consists of The Dragon’s Path and The King’s Blood. He also wrote Hunter’s Run, a collaborative novel with George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, and, as M. L. N. Hanover, the four-volume paranormal romance series Black Sun’s Daughter.

  Ty Franck was born in Portland, Oregon, and has had nearly every job known to man, including a variety of fast-food jobs, rock-quarry grunt, newspaper reporter, radio advertising salesman, composite-materials fabricator, director of operations for a computer manufacturing firm, and part owner of an accounting-software consulting firm. He is currently the personal assistant to fellow writer George R. R. Martin, where he makes coffee, runs to the post office, and argues about what constitutes good writing. He mostly loses.

  In the tense story that follows, they show us that “honor” can mean many different things to many different people—and to nonpeople too.

  A Man Without Honor

  BY JAMES S. A. COREY

  For the exclusive eyes of George Louis, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland

  30 September 172–

  Your Majesty, I was once an honorable man.

  I do not wish at this late date to recount the circumstances under which Governor Smith revoked my Letter of Marque, nor the deceptions by which I was then forced to choose between my loyalty to the crown or my honor as a gentleman. I made my choices then, and I have accepted the consequences of them. For the greater part of a decade, I have led my crew through Caribbean waters, the forces of personal loyalty, despair, and rude vengeance changing me as a caterpillar in its chrysalis into the debased, cruel, and black-hearted man that I was accused of being long before it was true. I have sunk a dozen ships. I have ransomed members of your own family. I have taken what was not mine by right but by necessity. I have no doubt that you have heard my name spoken in tones of condemnation, and rightly so, for I have made that original calumny true a hundred times over. Nor shall I pretend any deep regret for this. My loyalty and care were rewarded with betrayal, and though it be a defect of my soul, such a trust once broken with me can never be mended.

  I have likewise no doubt that on this, the occasion of Governor Smith’s death, some part of the credit or blame for his demise might be attributed to me. I write to you now not to ask pardon for that which I have done or defend myself against accusations of which I am innocent. It is my sole hope that you shall read my words and through them understand better the circumstances of the governor’s death and my own role in it. I only ask that as you read this you bear in mind these two things: I swear before God that, though he had earned my vengeance a thousand times over, it was not my hand that slew the governor, and that I was once an honorable man.

  Picture, then, my ship, the Dominic of Osma, as she rode upon the August waves. A hurricane had assaulted the coast three days earlier, and water and air held the serenity that only comes after such a storm or before it. The sun shone with a debilitating heat, looking down upon our poor sinners’ heads like the eye of an unforgiving God or else His counterpart, and we rode upon a sea whose blue echoed the sky. I recall feeli
ng a profound peace as we moved between these two matchless vastnesses. I had a hold stocked with salt pork, freshwater, limes, and rum. I had a crew of men whose loyalty and ability I had reason to trust. We might have spent weeks upon the sea without sighting land or fellow vessel before I felt the first pang of anxiety.

  But that was not to be.

  Quohog was the first man to sight the doomed ship, and his barbaric yawp sounded down from the crow’s nest. In his accent, one of the oddest I have heard in the widely traveled Carib, the call of Ship ahoy! sounded more Zeeah loy and his further report of smoke as Awch. For those of us who had shipped with him, there could be no doubt as to the meaning of his garble, but as to the intent of it, I believe we all hesitated. Quohog had a well-earned reputation as a man who enjoyed a good joke, and none of us, myself included, would have been surprised if he had invented the sighting for the sheer joy of looking down at the deck and watching us scatter. So it was that I made no order to change our sail until I could, with spyglass in hand, climb aloft and confirm the existence of this improbable ship.

  She was a merchant fluyt, that was clear, and she rode low in the water. Sails once proud hung ragged from her arms, and smoke rose from her. The gunports were open, and her half dozen cannon stood openmouthed and unmanned. She flew the tattered flag of Denmark, and her rail and sides were splintered and burned. In retrospect, I believe it was the burning that led me astray, for I had seen the leavings of many battles at sea, and I had never seen scorching of that kind from a weapon of man. I assumed instead that I was looking upon a lightning-struck ship that had through ill chance or malice been caught in the open sea during the tempest just passed. Such easy prizes were rare but not unheard of, and with pleasure at our good fortune, I called the man at the wheel to turn us in pursuit.

  I can recall still the slow movement of the derelict from a pinpoint on the horizon to a mass of black no larger than a coin held at arm’s length. Her masts took shape even without the aid of a glass, and then as if between one breath and the next we were upon her. Close, the extent of the damage she had suffered became clear. The black char along her sides had reduced her higher planks to coal, and rough holes punctured her flesh. I had no doubt that she rode low not from the weight of her cargo but because she was taking on water. The smoke that rose from her was the pale white of great heat, and as we came alongside, my only fear was that the fire might reach whatever magazine the merchant possessed and detonate her powder while we were near enough to be harmed. The name on her counter was Vargud van Haarlem. I prided myself on knowing the waters where I plied my trade, and I had never heard of her. That alone should have been warning, but I was rash and, worse, curious. I ordered her boarded, gave command to my first mate Mister Kopler, and crossed to her ruined deck myself.