Part 17 (2/2)

”We didn't panic!”

”Then why did you just tear him out of there? And why did you kill Phyllis?”

”She was a torturer, a murderer!”

Spencer shook his head violently. ”She was just as much a prisoner as Sax.”

”She was not!”

”You don't know. You killed her just because of how it looked! You're no better than they are.”

”f.u.c.k that! They're the ones torturing us! You didn't stop them and so we had to!”

Cursing in Russian, Maya stalked to one of the drivers' seats and started the rover. ”Send the message to Coyote,” she snapped at Michel.

Michel struggled to recall how to operate the radio. His hand tapped out the release for the bursted message that they had Sax. Then he went back to Sax, who was lying on the couch breathing shallowly. In shock. Patches of his scalp had been shaved. He too had had a b.l.o.o.d.y nose. Spencer gently wiped it, shaking his head. ”They use MRI, and focused ultrasound,” he said dully. ”Taking him out like that could have...” He shook his head.

Sax's pulse was weak and irregular. Michel went to work getting the suit off him, watching his own hands move like floating starfish; they were disconnected from his own volition, it was as if he were trying to work a damaged teleoperator. I've been stunned, he thought. I'm concussed. He felt nauseated. Spencer and Maya were shouting at each other angrily, really getting furious, and he couldn't follow why.

”She was a b.i.t.c.h!”

”If people were killed for being b.i.t.c.hes you never would have made it off the Ares Ares!”

”Stop it,” he said to them weakly ”Both of you.” He did not quite understand what they were saying, but it was clearly a fight, and he knew had to mediate. Maya was incandescent with rage and pain, crying and shouting. Spencer was shouting back, his whole body trembling. Sax was still comatose. I'm going to have to start doing psychotherapy again, Michel thought, and giggled. He navigated his way to a driver's seat and tried to comprehend the driver's controls, which pulsed blurrily under the flying black dust outside the winds.h.i.+eld. ”Drive,” he said desperately to Maya. She was in the seat next to him weeping furiously, both hands clenching the steering wheel. Michel put a hand to her shoulder and she knocked it aside; it flew away as if on a string rather than the end of his arm, and he almost fell out of his chair. ”Talk later,” he said. ”What's done is done. Now we have to get home.”

”We have no home,” Maya snarled.

Part Six

Tariqat

Big Man came from a big planet. He was just as much a visitor to Mars as Paul Bunyan, only pa.s.sing by when he spotted it and stopped to look around, and he was still there when Paul Bunyan dropped in, and that's why they had the fight. Big Man won that fight, as you know. But after Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox Babe were dead, there was no one else around to talk to, and Mars for Big Man was like trying to live on a basketball. So he wandered around for a while tearing things apart, trying to make them fit, and then he gave up and left.

After that, all the bacteria inside Paul Bunyan and his ox Babe left their bodies, and circulated in the warm water lying on the bedrock, deep underground. They ate methane and hydrogen sulfide, and withstood the weight of billions of tons of rock, as if they were living on some neutron planet. Their chromosomes began to break, mutation after mutation, and at the reproduction rate of ten generations per day, it didn't take long for good old survival of the fittest to make its natural selections. And billions of years pa.s.sed. And before long there was an entire submartian evolutionary history, moving up through the cracks in the regolith and the s.p.a.ces between sand grains, right up into the cold desert suns.h.i.+ne. All kinds of creatures, the whole spread- but everything was tiny. That's all there was room for underground, see, and by the time they hit the surface certain patterns were set. And there wasn't much to encourage growth up there anyway. So a whole chasmoendolithic biosphere developed, in which everything was small. Their whales were the size of first-day tadpoles, their sequoias were like antler lichen, and so on down the line. It was as if the two-magnitude ratio, which always has things on Mars a hundred times bigger than their counterparts on Earth, had finally gone the other way, and piled it on.

And so their evolution produced the little red people. They're like us- or they look kind of like us when we see them. But that's because we only ever see them out of the corner of our eyes. If you get a clear look at one you will see that it looks like a very tiny standing salamander, dark red, although the skin apparently does have some chameleon abilities, and they are usually the same color as the rocks they are standing among. If you see one really clearly you'll notice that its skin resembles plate lichen mixed with sand grains, and its eyes are rubies. It's fascinating, but don't get too excited because the truth is you're not ever going to see one of them that clearly. It's just too hard. When they hold still we flat can't see them. We would never see them at all, except that some of them when they get in a mood are so confident that they can freeze and disappear that they will jump around when they're in your peripheral vision, just to blow your mind. So you see that, but then they stop moving when you turn your eye to look, and you never can spot them again.

They live everywhere, including all our rooms. Usually there's a few in every pile of dust in the corners. And how many can say their rooms don't have some dust in their corners? I thought not. It makes a good abrasive when you get around to swiping down, doesn't it. Yes, on those days the little red people all have to run like h.e.l.l. Disasters for them. They figure we're crazy huge idiots that every once in a while have fits and go on a rampage.

Yes, it is true that the first human to see the little red people was John Boone. What else would you expect? He saw them within hours of his landing. Later he learned to see them even when they were still, and then he began talking to the ones he spotted in his rooms, until they finally cracked and talked back. John and them taught each other their languages, and you can still hear the little red people use all kinds of John Booneisms in their English. Eventually a whole crowd of them traveled with Boone wherever he went. They liked it, and John wasn't a very neat person, so they had their spots. Yes, there were several hundred of them in Nicosia the night he was killed. That's what actually got those Arabs who died later that night- a whole gang of the little ones went after them. Gruesome.

Anyway, they were John Boone's friends, and they were just as sad as the rest of us when he was killed. There's no human since who has learned their language, or gotten to know them anywhere near as close. Yes, John was also the first to tell stories about them. A lot of what we know about them comes from him, because of that special relations.h.i.+p. Yes, it is said that excessive use of omegendorph causes faint red crawling dots in the abuser's peripheral vision. But why do you ask?

Anyway, since John's death the little red people have been living with us and laying low, watching us with their ruby eyes and trying to find out what we're like, and why we do what we do. And how they can deal with us, and get what they want- which is people they can talk to and be friends with, who won't sweep them out every few months or wreck the planet either. So they're watching us. Whole caravan cities are carrying the little red people around with us. And they're getting ready to talk to us again. They're figuring out who they should talk to. They're asking themselves, which of these giant idiots knows about Ka?

That's their name for Mars, yes. They call it Ka. The Arabs love that fact because the Arabic for Mars is Qahira, and the j.a.panese like it too because their name for it is Kasei. But actually a whole lot of Earth names for Mars have the sound ka in them somewhere- and some little red dialects have it as m'kah, which adds a sound that's in a lot of other Terran names for it too. It's possible that the little red people had a s.p.a.ce program in earlier times, and came to Earth and were our fairies, elves and little people generally, and at that time told some humans where they came from, and gave us the name. On the other hand it may be that the planet itself suggests the sound in some hypnotic way that affects all conscious observers, whether standing right on it or seeing it as a red star in the sky. I don't know, maybe it's the color that does it. Ka.

And so the ka watch us and they ask, who knows Ka? Who spends time with Ka, and learns Ka, and likes to touch Ka, and walks around on Ka, and lets Ka seep into them, and leaves the dust in their rooms alone? Those are the humans we're going to talk to. Pretty soon we're going to introduce ourselves, they say, to just as many of you as we can find who seem like Ka. And when we do, you'd better be ready. We're going to have a plan. It'll be time to drop everything and walk right out on the streets into a new world. It'll be time to free Ka.

They drove south in silence, the car bobbling under the wind's onslaughts. Hour followed hour, and there was no word from Michel and Maya; they had arranged for bursted radio signals that sounded very similar to the static caused by lightning, one for success and one for failure. But the radio only hissed, barely audible over the roaring wind. Nirgal got more and more frightened the longer they waited; it seemed that some kind of disaster had overtaken their companions on the outer bank, and given how extreme their own night had been- the desperate crawling through the howling blackness, the hurtling debris, the wild firing by some of the people inside the broken tents- the possibilities were grim. The whole plan now looked crazy, and Nirgal wondered at Coyote's judgment, Coyote who was studying his AI screen muttering to himself and rocking over his hurt s.h.i.+ns... of course the others had agreed to the plan, as had Nirgal, and Maya and Spencer had helped to formulate it, along with the Mareotis Reds. And no one had expected the katabatic hurricane to become this severe. But Coyote had been the leader, no doubt about it. And now he was looking as distraught as Nirgal had ever seen him, angry, worried, frightened.

Then the radio crackled just as if a pair of lightning bolts had struck nearby, and the decryption of the message followed immediately. Success Success. Success. They had found Sax on the outer bank, and got him out.

The mood in the car went from gloom to elation as if launched from a slingshot. They shouted incoherently, they laughed, they embraced each other; Nirgal and Kasei wiped tears of joy and relief from their eyes, and Art, who had stayed in the car during the raid, and then taken it on himself to drive around picking them up out of the black wind, gave them slaps on the back that knocked them all over the compartment, shouting, ”Good job! Good job!”

Coyote, dosed thoroughly with painkillers, laughed his crazed laugh. Nirgal felt physically light, as if the gravity in his chest had lessened. Such extremes of exertion, fear, anxiety- now joy- giddily he understood that these were the moments that etched themselves on one's mind forever, when one was struck by the shocking reality of reality, so seldom felt, now igniting in him like a fuse. And he could see the same stark glory lighting all his companions' faces, wild animals glowing with spirit.

The Reds took off north for their refuge in Mareotis. Coyote drove south hard, to the rendezvous with Maya and Michel. They met in a dim chocolate dawn, far up Echus Chasma. The group from the inner-bank car hurried over into Michel and Maya's car, ready to renew the celebration. Nirgal tumbled through the lock and shook hands with Spencer, a short round-faced drawn-looking man, whose hands were trembling. Nevertheless he inspected Nirgal closely. ”Good to meet you,” he said. ”I've heard about you.”

”It went really well,” Coyote was saying, to a chorus of shouted protest from Kasei and Art and Nirgal. In fact they had barely escaped with their lives, crawling around on the inner bank trying to survive the typhoon and the panicked police inside the tent, trying to find the car while Art tried to find them....

Maya's glare cut short their merriment. In fact with the initial joy of the rendezvous over, it was becoming clear that things were not right in her car. Sax had been saved, but a bit too late. He had been tortured, Maya told them curtly. It was not clear how much damage had been done to him, as he was unconscious.

Nirgal went to the back of the compartment to see him. He lay on the couch senselessly, his smashed face a shocking sight. Michel came back and sat down, woozy from a blow to the head. And Maya and Spencer appeared to be having some kind of disagreement, they weren't explaining but they did not look at each other, or speak to each other. Maya was clearly in a foul mood, Nirgal recognized the look from childhood, although this one was worse, her face hard and her mouth set in a downturned sickle.

”I killed Phyllis,” she told Coyote.

There was silence. Nirgal's hands went cold. Suddenly, looking around at the others, he saw that they all felt awkward. It was the sole woman among them who was the killer, and for a second there was something strange in that which they all felt, including Maya- who drew herself up, scornful of their cowardice. None of this was rational or even conscious in them, Nirgal saw as he read their faces, but rather something primal, instinctive, biological. And so Maya only stared them down the more, contemptuous of their horror, glaring at them with an eagle's alien hostility.

Coyote stepped to her side and went on his toes to peck her on the cheek with a kiss, meeting her glare foursquare. ”You did good,” he said, putting a hand to her arm. ”You saved Sax.”

Maya shrugged him off and said, ”We blew up the machine they had Sax hooked into. I don't know if we managed to wreck any records. Probably not. And they know they had him, and that someone took him back. So there's no reason to celebrate. They'll come after us now with everything they've got.”

”I don't think they're that well organized,” Art offered.

”You shut up,” Maya told him.

”Well, okay, but look, now that they know about you, you won't have to hide so much, right?”

”Back in business,” Coyote muttered.

They drove south together through that day, as the dust torn up by the katabatic storm was enough to hide them from satellite cameras. Tension remained high; Maya was in a black fury, and could not be spoken to. Michel handled her like an unexploded bomb, trying always to get her focused on the practical matters of the moment, so that she might forget their terrible night out. But with Sax lying on a couch in the living compartment of their car, unconscious and looking like a rac.o.o.n with all his bruises, this was no easy thing to forget. Nirgal sat beside Sax for hours on end, a hand placed flat on his ribs, or the top of his head. Other than that there was nothing to be done. Even without the black eyes he wouldn't have looked much like the Sax Russell whom Nirgal had known as a child. It was a visceral shock to see the signs of physical abuse on him, proof positive that they had deadly enemies in the world. This was something Nirgal had been wondering about in recent years, so that the sight of Sax was an ugly, sickening thing- not just that they had enemies, but that there were people who would do this kind of thing, had always been doing it all through history, just as the unbelievable accounts had it. They were real after all. And Sax only one of millions of victims.

As Sax slept, his head rolled from side to side. ”I'm going to give him a shot of pandorph,” Michel said. ”Him and then me.”

”There's something wrong with his lungs,” Nirgal said.

<script>