Old Mars Read online

  The thought of that little replica Athy, far from the sun, greener than green, waiting, gave me screaming nightmares.

  Warm-up complete. I straightened myself at the piano. A flex of the fingers, and into the opening of “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” And on strode Count Jack Fitzgerald, arms wide, handkerchief in one hand, beaming, the words pealing from his lips. Professional, consummate, marvelous. I never loved him more dearly than striding into the spotlights. The auditorium lit up with soft flashes of color: Uliri lighting up their bioluminescent mantles, their equivalent of applause.

  Count Jack stopped in midline. I lifted my hands from the keys as if the ivory were poisoned. The silence was sudden and immense. Every light froze on, then softly faded to black.

  “No,” he said softly. “This will not do.”

  He held up his hands, showed each of them in turn to the audience. Then he brought them together in a single clap that rang out into the black vastness. Clap one, two, three. He waited. Then I heard the sound of a single pair of tentacles slapping together. It was not a clap, never a clap, but it was applause. Another joined it, another and another, until waves of slow tentacle claps washed around the auditorium. Count Jack raised his hands: enough. The silence was instant. Then he gave himself a round of applause, and me a round of applause, and I him. The Uliri caught the idea at once. Applause rang from every tier and level and joist of the Martian Queen’s concert hall.

  “Now, let’s try that again,” Count Jack said, and without warning, strode off the stage. I saw him in the wings, indicating for me to milk it. I counted a good minute before I struck up the introduction to “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” On he strode, arms wide, handkerchief in hand, beaming. And the concert hall erupted. Applause: wholehearted, loud-ringing, mighty applause, breaking like an ocean from one side of the concert hall to the other, wave upon wave upon wave, on and on and on.

  Count Jack winked to me as he swept past into the brilliance of the lights to take the greatest applause of his life.

  “What a house, Faisal! What a house!”

  For Edgar Rice Burroughs,

  Leigh Brackett, Catherine Moore,

  Ray Bradbury, and Roger Zelazny,

  who inspired this book,

  and Robert Silverberg,

  who should have been in it.

  By George R. R. Martin

  A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE

  Book One: A Game of Thrones

  Book Two: A Clash of Kings

  Book Three: A Storm of Swords

  Book Four: A Feast for Crows

  Book Five: A Dance with Dragons

  Dying of the Light

  Windhaven (with Lisa Tuttle)

  Fevre Dream

  The Armageddon Rag

  Dead Man’s Hand (with John J. Miller)

  Old Mars (with Gardner Dozois)

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Dreamsongs: Volume I

  Dreamsongs: Volume II

  A Song for Lya and Other Stories

  Songs of Stars and Shadows

  Sandkings

  Songs the Dead Men Sing

  Nightflyers

  Tuf Voyaging

  Portraits of His Children

  Quartet

  EDITED BY GEORGE R. R. MARTIN

  New Voices in Science Fiction,

  Volumes 1–4

  The Science Fiction Weight-Loss Book

  (With Isaac Asimov and Martin Harry Greenberg)

  The John W. Campbell Awards,

  Volume 5

  Night Visions 3

  Wild Cards I–XXII

  CO-EDITED WITH GARDNER DOZOIS

  Warrior I and II

  Songs of the Dying Earth

  Songs of Love and Death

  Down These Strange Streets

  By Gardner Dozois

  NOVELS

  Strangers

  Nightmare Blue (with George Alec Effinger)

  Hunter’s Run (with George R. R. Martin and Daniel Abraham)

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  When the Great Days Come

  Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys with

  Gardner Dozois

  Geodesic Dreams

  Morning Child and Other Stories

  Slow Dancing Through Time

  The Visible Man

  EDITED BY GARDNER DOZOIS

  The Year’s Best Science Fiction #1–30

  The New Space Opera (with Jonathan Strahan)

  The New Space Opera 2 (with Jonathan Strahan)

  Modern Classics of Science Fiction

  Modern Classics of Fantasy

  The Good Old Stuff

  The Good New Stuff

  The “Magic Tales” series 1–37 (with Jack Dann)

  Wizards (with Jack Dann)

  The Dragon Book (with Jack Dann)

  A Day in the Life

  Another World

  About the Editors

  George R. R. Martin is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including the acclaimed series A Song of Ice and Fire—A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons. He won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for his novelette “Sandkings,” and, in 2012, he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the World Fantasy Convention. As a writer-producer, he has worked on The Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast, and various feature films and pilots that were never made. He lives with the lovely Parris in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

  Gardner Dozois has won fifteen Hugo Awards and thirty-seven Locus Awards for his editing work, plus two Nebula Awards for his own writing. He was the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction for twenty years, and is the author or editor of over a hundred books, including The Year’s Best Science Fiction. In 2011 Dozois was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.