Part 38 (1/2)

A whir and a flash of wings crossed the window. Payne cursed and s.n.a.t.c.hed up his rifle. Arthur felt the now-familiar sensation of telepathic a.s.sault-a wave of emotions so confusing that he nearly dropped to his knees-and he defended himself again, the way Atwood and Miss Didot had taught him. The sensation pa.s.sed.

”Missed,” Payne said. ”Where'd it go? Do you see it?”

”Shaw!” Atwood called up from the depths below. His voice was a faint ghostly echo, m.u.f.fled by countless tons of stone and dirt and by the thin Martian air. ”Shaw! I need you. Come here.”

Atwood was holed up in an odd little windowless room on a recessed mezzanine floor beneath the South Gallery-to get to it Arthur had to clamber down a narrow slippery-sided chute. He suspected it had once been used for disposing of waste, or feeding something.

The room was roughly pentagonal in shape. Atwood had been working there for hours by the light of a hurricane lamp and the place reeked of soot and oil. Atwood's eyes were bloodshot and his fingers were ink-stained. His condition-both physical and mental-had degraded rapidly since entering the castle. He resembled a feverish monk in his cell, or a mad prisoner. All around him on the floor were his papers: sketches he'd made of the carvings on the castle's walls.

The castle was almost empty. Wind and dust had long since eroded most traces of ornament or furnis.h.i.+ng or daily life, with the exception of a series of heavy ceramic tablets, which they'd found scattered haphazardly throughout the corridors. Almost a dozen of the things so far, and no doubt there were more. Some were mounted in recesses in the walls. Others were mounted on the sides of obelisks. Some were high out of reach; others were buried in drifts of dust. A few had shattered. Atwood's first instruction that morning, as soon as a comfortable stalemate with the enemy had been achieved, had been to collect half a dozen specimens and bring them to his cell. He'd spent the afternoon sc.r.a.ping dirt from them with a pen-knife to reveal the carvings beneath.

”I need your help,” Atwood said. ”Sit, sit.”

Arthur cleared papers to make a s.p.a.ce.

”No! Don't-it's a map, Shaw, it's a map! For G.o.d's sake, be careful. Sit there. Give me that and sit there.”

Atwood's pistol occupied an empty spot on the floor. Arthur handed it to Atwood and sat down.

”That was our first encounter since sundown,” Arthur said. ”Payne thinks they fear the rifle. I don't know-they seem a little different from the last lot.”

”Hmm? Oh-yes. Perhaps. There used to be many nations on Mars, Shaw. You see, their science is jumbled together with their history. I'm not sure that they made quite the same distinctions as we do.”

”You've been reading their carvings, then.”

”Yes. They were many nations, and not all were so wise or so civilised as the builders of this observatory-that's what it is, Shaw, or you might say a library or a tomb. The builders were plagued by barbarian tribes. Let's suppose that the creatures that have plagued us are descendants of those barbarians of Old Mars-devolved further, into a truly primitive state.”

”If you like. What do these carvings say about how to get home?”

”Home?” Atwood said. ”What about Josephine?”

Arthur blinked. For a moment, he was confused. He hadn't thought about Josephine in-how long? Not since Sun's death, at least. Since then he'd had no time to think of anything but the march, hunger and fear, the flight from the Martians.

”She's gone, isn't she, Atwood?”

”Gone? Pull yourself together, Shaw-now is no time for a nervous collapse.”

”She's gone, Atwood. She's gone. It was madness to ever think otherwise. I let you trick me here-I did terrible things to help you-and she was always gone, wasn't she? I let you-I played a trick on myself, Atwood-as if I'd ... like the sort of poor fool who lets some crooked medium play nasty tricks on him. I'm a fool. A fool.”

”We have travelled across the void, and survived the surface of Mars. Now is no time for despair. But I need your help.”

”If you mention her name again, Atwood, I shan't be responsible for what I might do.”

”Hmm.” Atwood edged a hand towards his revolver. Then he shrugged.

”To business, then.”

”That would be best, Atwood. What did you want?”

Atwood stood. His legs nearly went out from under him.

Arthur jumped up.

”Sorry, Shaw. Bit stiff. Thank you.”

As Atwood stumbled past, Arthur noticed his rash-an awful purple mottling on his neck. He'd torn his nails b.l.o.o.d.y sc.r.a.ping at the carvings. The man was falling apart. Well, weren't they all?

”The trial that remains is one of the will, Shaw, not the body. There are ghosts here-did you know that? Echoes, one might say. Sometimes we speak of a writer putting his soul into his words, don't we? This was a great centre of learning and they were great magicians. More to learn here than in Athens and all of Egypt and every library in London. I wish I had a hundred years.”

Arthur stepped over Atwood's papers and crouched to examine the tablets stacked in the corner. Sc.r.a.ped clean, the tablets displayed clear evidence of writing-far clearer than the faint scratches in the tower. Perhaps the eroding winds were less severe in the lee of the mountain. They were covered in swooping vectors, odd geometries, and inscrutable hieroglyphs that were somehow uncomfortably dense, in a way that suggested that they might move if you took your eyes off them; or that they were already slowly moving.

”They didn't quite see the stars the way we do,” Atwood said. ”Their language, their way of thinking, was very different from ours. A matter of translation, that's all. Mathematics. Should have brought Jupiter after all. Ah, well.”

”The stars.”

”Yes. Before-before the disaster that destroyed them, they were engaged in a study not so very different from ours. I told you, didn't I? They were attempting to explore the spheres. To move up.”

”Up? You mean to Earth.”

”Yes! Earth. The Blue Sphere. But it's hard to go up. Much easier to go down. This very room-this very room once contained a creature that they brought up from below-a thing from the Black Sphere, Shaw. Saturn. Can you imagine it?”

”No.”

Arthur picked up a page of Atwood's sketches. The same hieroglyphs, over and over, with notes in Atwood's erratic handwriting.

”Listen. I've seen these before. In the Liber Ad Astra. On the floor of your library. When I first saw them I thought a madman or a drunk had painted them. Yet here they are on Mars.”

”But that was down,” Atwood said, as if he hadn't heard. ”Into the dark. They never rose up-or else certainly history would have recorded it. They never solved the puzzle, Shaw.”

”Then what good are they to us? We're stuck here-is that what you're saying?”

”No.” Atwood s.n.a.t.c.hed his papers back. ”Leave that alone, Shaw. Listen. In this place they summoned up creatures from the lower heavens; and they peered into the higher heavens and prayed. They could not unlock the gates above them, but perhaps we can.”

He sat down against the wall and pulled his journal from his pocket. ”Our calculations. The stars from our sphere. What they didn't know. And so we can close the circle. We must think like them, Shaw-we must become them. And then become greater than them.”

”Who were they? What were they?”

”Scholars. Magicians. The greatest of their kind. They left these carvings for us-they knew we would come. Someone would come. Do you think they knew it would be me?”

”What happened to them? This is a ruin-this is a wasteland.”

”An excellent question. I don't know.”

”But you knew about this all along. Even back in London, you meant to come here.”