Old Mars Read online

  Kane and Stephen were ordering the hands to check the various domes in advance of the storm’s arrival.

  “Tilda and I will check the ultralights,” Noel-Pa called as they walked past the huddle.

  “Wait!” Stephen began.

  “Look, Dad, if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s how to lash down a plane. I tied down enough fighters in my day.” Noel-Pa didn’t wait but took Tilda’s arm, and they hustled to the airlock closest to the ultralights.

  The wind hit them the moment they stepped through, and Tilda staggered. Noel-Pa grabbed her around the waist and steadied her. Hunching against the moaning gusts, they rushed to Tilda’s ultralight. Noel-Pa wrestled with the canopy and got it open. He boosted her up, and she scrambled into the cockpit.

  He pressed his helmet against hers and shouted, “I’ll unlash you, and you get airborne.”

  “How will you—”

  “I’ll manage. Be ready.”

  He pulled the canopy forward and dropped to the ground. He then unlashed the ultralight. She felt it begin to sway. Once he was clear, she went taxiing down the runway with the wind buffeting the craft and setting the long wings to vibrating. She managed to get into the air, and circled, watching as her father ran to another ultralight and pulled back the canopy. He dropped back down and un-tethered one line.

  The wind was getting worse and worse, and dust blotted out the sun, creating an unnatural twilight. Tilda fought the controls as her father ran to the next tether. A shaft of light spilled onto the red ground as the airlock cycled open.

  A suited figure ran out and charged at Noel-Pa. Too short and broad to be Daddy-Kane. Tilda switched on her radio and heard her grandfather’s voice raging in her headphones.

  “Bastard! Son of a bitch. Like hell you’re going to take her.”

  “Stephen.” Noel-Pa’s voice was loud but still placating. “This is—”

  But he never got to finish. The older man barreled into him. Noel-Pa managed to keep his feet, but they were locked in anger’s embrace. Stephen was raining blows onto Noel-Pa’s body. The SpaceCom officer was trying to hold him off and not strike back. The half-tethered ultralight was whipping back and forth like the tail of a frenzied scorpion.

  Tilda forgot about the plan. She set her radio on emergency channel and screamed out, “Daddy! Daddy! Help!”

  It was getting harder and harder to keep the wings level as the wind swirled and howled. Noel-Pa managed to push Stephen away, but he didn’t see the tail of the plane swinging around, propelled by a vicious gust of wind. It smashed into his back and head, and he collapsed onto the sand.

  “Papa!” Tilda screamed, and she turned the nose of her plane toward the runway.

  She was trembling with fear, and that, coupled with the wind, made it a terrible landing. One wheel collapsed, and a wing dug deep into the sand and crumpled. She pushed back the canopy and scrambled down. She could barely keep her feet as she ran to her father. Stephen stood, hands hanging limply at his side, braced against the wind. He was staring down at Noel-Pa, an expression of both shock and fury on his lined face.

  Tilda dropped to her knees next to her father’s still form. “You monster! You hateful old bastard! You’ve killed him. I hate you! I hate you!” Her words seemed to drive Stephen back as much as the wind.

  The airlock opened again, and another suited figure raced out. Daddy-Kane reached her side. He was gasping for breath.

  “Noel. Oh God, Noel.”

  A gust of wind screamed past and sent Tilda’s crashed ultralight tumbling across the sands.

  “We’ve got to get inside!” Stephen screamed.

  Daddy-Kane grunted with effort, but lifted his husband into his arms, and the foursome clung together and fought their way back to the airlock.

  The storm raged on, blotting out the sun and setting everyone’s nerves on edge as the wind screamed and moaned around the dome. Noel lay in bed and didn’t regain consciousness. Henry, one of the hands who had some first-aid training, did what he could.

  “He needs to be in the hospital in Lowell City,” he said, but, of course, the storm made that impossible. Henry shook his head and slipped away, leaving Kane to sit next to the bed, holding his husband’s limp hand.

  Tilda sat with them. Hours passed and she felt limp with exhaustion. Once Stephen came to the bedroom door.

  “Go away.”

  “Kane.”

  “I can’t deal with you right now.” Kane looked at Tilda. “Go to bed.”

  “I want to help. I want to be here,” she said.

  “Get some sleep. Then I’ll have you take over and I’ll rest. Okay?”

  “You’ll call me if …”

  “Nothing’s going to happen.” She stood, came around to his side of the bed and kissed his cheek. He kissed her back, but never let go of Noel’s hand, as if by sheer will he could hold Noel in life.

  She undressed and crawled into bed. She hadn’t thought she’d be able to sleep, but sometimes the body can trump the mind.

  She was walking through the Martian city, and once again it was filled with Martians, tall and graceful. Among the aliens were two smaller figures. One was very slight with long black hair. The other Tilda instantly recognized. It was Noel-Pa. His arm was linked through the woman’s.

  Tilda ran forward. “Papa, Papa!” He released Miyako and took her in his arms. “What are you doing here?” But he didn’t answer, just smiled down at her. “Come on,” she urged. “We have to go home. Come with me.”

  She took his hand and tugged, but he resisted and slid his hand out of hers. He then linked arms with Miyako again, and they drifted away. Tilda ran after them, but she didn’t seem to be making any progress, and they got farther and farther away. She looked around and saw a Martian standing at the top of the steps of what she called the temple. There was something familiar about that arrogant face and the set of the faceted eyes.

  Ozymandias.

  She ran up the steps and stood looking up at him. Unlike the other Martians, he looked down and seemed to see her.

  “Where’s my dad gone?”

  The music crashed over her, filled with information that she couldn’t process, and she awoke.

  She returned to her fathers’ bedroom, where a tense conference was under way. Henry had pulled back the eyelid on Noel’s left eye. The pupil was so dilated that there was almost no blue left in the eye.

  “His blood pressure is spiking,” Henry said, “and his pulse is so slow I can barely find it.”

  “Meaning what?” Daddy-Kane demanded.

  “There’s probably a bleed inside his skull. If the pressure isn’t relieved, he’s going to die.”

  “So do it,” Kane ordered.

  Henry backed away, palms out as if pushing away Daddy-Kane’s words. “No, no, not me. I don’t have the skill or the training for something like that.”

  He fled the room before Kane could speak. Father and daughter stood staring at each other. “A storm this bad will jam the engine on a crawler,” he said. “And it’s a five-day trip to Lowell even in good conditions.” His shoulders slumped, and she watched him accept the inevitable.

  “That’s why he’s in the city,” Tilda murmured almost to herself. “He’s dying, and he’s gone to the city.”

  “What are you talking about?” Daddy-Kane asked. Anger edged each word.

  “I dreamed about Daddy and Miyako. They were in the city together. Ozymandias was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t understand.” Her voice broke.

  “That’s crazy talk. And who’s Ozymandias? And he’s not going to die. I won’t let him die!” He strode around the room as if he could outpace death.

  Tilda’s mind seemed to be fluttering in frantic circles. She kept trying to think of plans, solutions, alternatives, but all she saw was Ali’s warm brown eyes and soft smile. Then she realized that he was the solution. “Ali!” she shouted.

  “What?”

  “He was a scrub tech at the clinic in Bra
dbury. He’s going off to medical school.”

  “They’re on the other side of the canal, and we can’t fly in this,” Daddy-Kane said.

  “Zip line. Across the canal.”

  Kane considered. “We won’t have a lot of time. A storm this bad can overwhelm a suit too.”

  “Then we better do it fast,” Tilda said, and went to call Ali.

  It was a testament to the kindness of the Al-Jahanis that they didn’t balk or hesitate. Grandpa Stephen declared the plan insane and ordered that none of the hands were to help.

  Tilda felt her fingers curling into claws, and she was ready to launch herself at her grandfather. Any remnant of affection for the old man vanished at that moment, and she saw that something had happened with Kane too. He was chest to chest with his father, screaming into the old man’s face.

  “You son of a bitch! You want him to die. Someone will help me. Someone has to hate you as much as I do!”

  Daddy-Kane’s words hit like acid, and Stephen seemed to shrivel under the assault. And Kane was right. Several of the hands had come to like both Noel and Kane, and offered to help. Tilda wanted to go with them, but Kane didn’t want her out in the storm.

  “Stay with Noel,” Daddy-Kane said, hugging her close. “Keep him with us.” He started away, then looked back. There was a grey cast beneath his dark skin. “And don’t let your grandfather into the room.”

  Eyes wide, Tilda just nodded. She locked the door and returned to Noel-Pa’s side.

  Forty minutes ticked past, with Tilda holding her father’s hand, talking to him, reminding him of their life together. Eventually, the door opened, and Kane and Ali entered. The young man looked scared but determined.

  Tilda leaped up and hugged him. “Thank you. Thank you.” She brushed away the tears that sprang into her eyes.

  “Don’t thank me yet, but I think it’s going to be okay. Neanderthals did trepannings, and I’ve got an uplink on my Ring to the Lowell Medical Center, and a neurosurgeon is going to walk me through it. So let’s get started. We need to shave his head and disinfect the skull. And I need a drill.”

  The prep took longer than the actual procedure. Daddy-Kane steadied his husband’s head while Tilda held a towel at the ready to mop up blood. Ali inserted the drill. The whine edged the teeth, and made the back of Tilda’s eyes hurt. She tightened her sweat-limned hands on the towel as the drill bit slowly through the skin. A burning scent as it hit bone, then Ali was through and a geyser of blood hit him in the chest and face. Tilda jumped forward to block it with a towel, only to have the older, white-haired woman doctor in the ScoopRing holo say shrilly, “No, let it bleed. We want the pressure reduced.”

  The spurting blood slowed to a trickle, then stopped. Ali scrambled to his feet and held his ScoopRing over the hole in Noel’s skull for the surgeon in Lowell City to inspect. Dr. Bush was leaning forward as if she could step across the hundreds of miles. Ali pulled out his earbud so that they could all hear the woman say, “Nice job, Ali. Looks good. Clean it, get a pad and a bandage on it, and he should awaken in a few hours.”

  Tilda hugged first her father, and then flung herself into Ali’s arms. He bestowed an awkward kiss that pretty much missed her mouth, but it was still really nice.

  Tilda went to her room to change into a clean shirt. Some of the spouting blood had hit her. She was rather proud of herself that she hadn’t fainted or reacted to the gore. Maybe she could have been a soldier. Of course, she wasn’t going to have a chance to find out now. What was going to happen once Noel-Pa awakened? she wondered. But that line of thought was too fraught and filled with pain and dread. She returned to her fathers’ bedroom.

  Hours passed. The pupil in Noel’s eye returned to normal. His blood pressure dropped, his pulse was normal. He didn’t awaken. Ali called Dr. Bush back. She had him test muscle reflexes on the bottom of the soldier’s foot. It all tested normal. But still he lay like an effigy, and with each passing hour, he seemed to fill out the sheet less and less, as if he were diminishing before their eyes. Kane’s face sagged and went grey. Ali made hurried calls to Dr. Bush, but nothing she suggested helped.

  The storm screamed itself out. Ali’s father wanted to fly over and collect him, but Ali refused. “Not until my patient wakes up” was what he said, and Tilda wanted to kiss him again. Grandpa Stephen came by once and gazed with a bitter expression at the prone form of his son-in-law. Tilda was glad then that Ali had stayed; it kept all the hate and bile from being spoken aloud.

  Tilda retreated to her bedroom and lay down. She was just going to rest her burning eyes for a few minutes—

  Noel-Pa and Miyako were sitting on either side of Ozymandias on the top step of the temple. All three of them looked at Tilda as she walked down the long boulevard. The air around Tilda pulsed and—

  She was suddenly elbow deep in a tea bush, carefully stripping off the tender leaves. Her hands were tiny, a child’s hands, and the skin was pale almond. She glanced up at her father, who smiled over at her.

  “This tea will be drunk in the White House and Buckingham Palace. It’s as if we’ll be there when they serve it,” he said, and Miyako felt a shiver of excitement.

  Her hands were larger now, gauntleted in armor, and they gripped a heavy rifle. There was a flash as a laser gouged a new crater on Ceres. Her faceplate darkened so that she wouldn’t be blinded. She threw herself in a long dive into cover.

  “Delia? Sam? Matt? Sound off. Talk to me, people.” Her voice was a deep baritone.

  Tilda had reached the foot of the steps, and she walked up to Ozymandias.

  “Do you understand now?” he asked.

  “The cities were the repository of memories,” she said. “Somehow you all lived together—the living and the dead. Past and present in tandem. No wonder we couldn’t understand. It was too much, so we interpreted it as music.”

  He nodded his long, thin head. “So many of us are lost. The voices of the ancestors, ground to dust by you rushing children.”

  “We didn’t understand,” Tilda said. “But Miyako became the bridge, didn’t she?”

  “And you and your father listened.”

  Tilda looked over at Noel-Pa. “But I’d like to take my father home now.”

  “Body and spirit are separated. And yours is not the call he will answer.”

  Tilda woke, scrambled out of bed, and ran to her father’s room.

  “That’s crazy. You want to drag a sick man out into those ruins?” Daddy-Kane said.

  “I’m sorry, I have to agree with your dad.” Ali gestured at the bed. “He’s getting weaker by the hour. The move might kill him.”

  “Right now he’s dying by inches. Isn’t he?” she demanded of Ali. He hesitated, then gave a slow nod. She turned back to Kane. “Please, Daddy. What have we got to lose? I’m telling you, he’s gone to the city. Like Miyako. He doesn’t think there’s anything to come back to. You have to convince him, lead him home.”

  Kane chewed at his lower lip. Looked over at the bed. The sheet seemed to barely rise and fall over Noel’s chest. He looked to Ali, who just shrugged helplessly.

  “I don’t think there’s anything more I can do.”

  Kane slowly said, “My mom heard the music. She wanted to die in the Martian city, but Dad wouldn’t hear of it. She begged me to help her, but I took his side. He took her to Lowell City. To the hospital.” It was a confession as raw as acid.

  “Don’t take his side this time,” Tilda pleaded. “Noel-Pa doesn’t have to die. He just needs a reason to live. Please, Daddy.”

  For a breathless second, it hung in the balance, then Daddy-Kane jumped up and grabbed Noel’s envirosuit. With Tilda’s and Ali’s help, they got him dressed. Kane lifted Noel into his arms.

  “My dad’s forbidden anyone to go into the city. You’ve got to cover for us, okay?” Kane asked the young man.

  “You got it.”

  Determining that Stephen was in the orchard dome, they hurried to the garage and the crawlers. As t
hey rolled across the dry lake bed, a dust plume rose like a phoenix’s tail behind them. Then they were at the city, and a wide boulevard stretched before them.

  “Is there someplace in particular we’re going?” Daddy-Kane asked.

  “Yes.” Tilda was staring intently through the front windshield. “I know the way.”

  The walls of the buildings gave back the echo of the crawler’s big engine, and the ever-present Martian wind sighed and whispered through the streets. A flash of movement had Tilda’s head jerking around, but it was only a dust devil. Slowly, an overlay of the memory city formed over the ruins. She could see the gaily dressed crowds, the streamers and kites dancing in the wind, the rainbow hues of the towers. The music was all around her.

  “Jesus Christ!” Daddy-Kane muttered. “Is that …? I hear it.”

  She guided them down now-familiar turns and streets, until the temple stood before them. “Up there. We need to take him up there.”

  Ozymandias was on the top step. When Tilda climbed out of the crawler, he gave her a slow nod and vanished.

  Kane gathered Noel in his arms, and the trio climbed the steep, high steps. Inside, the swirling patterns on the walls were faded and broken in places, and sand gritted beneath their boots.

  The music was like a river roaring past them, breaking like a prism into visions of alien lives and memories. Her father looked down at her, his face tense behind the helmet’s faceplate. “I can barely think. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Call him back. Tell him … you know what to tell him.”

  Kane nodded, knelt, and placed Noel on the floor of the temple. Then, taking Noel’s gloved hand in his, he said softly, “Wake up, honey.” Noel moaned and stirred slightly.

  This is going to work, Tilda exalted.

  Her ScoopRing chimed, a dissonant note in the Martian song. She wanted to ignore it, but its insistent clamor was starting to shatter the melody. She answered. It was Ali.

  His face in the holo was tight and tense. “Tilda, it’s your grandfather. He’s freakin’ the fuck out. Totally losing it. I tried to keep him out of the room, but he forced his way in. He knows where you’ve gone. He took off raving about how he was going to tear down the old city. How it’s luring away his family. Your granddad’s on his way to the city with a big earthmover.”