Exile (15 page)

Prime Cornelian clapped his two foremost hands, showing mock joy. "You've done it, Sam-Sei! After centuries of toil by countless thousands, you've built a better mousetrap!"

Unperturbed, Sam-Sei drew his hand over the metal wafer and the creature of light abruptly dropped the rodents.

"Perhaps not. . . ." Prime Cornelian said. But now as the long, thin, pinkish gray Martian rodents hit the floor, crouching stunned for a moment before starting to scurry off into the four corners of the room, the light-man, in four successive motions even quicker than those previously shown, moved into the four corners and then stood quietly back in his original spot.

"I still fail to see . . ." Prime Cornelian said, until he spied that the creature of light now held only the rodents' whiskered heads, neatly severed, in its hands.

"Ahh . . ." Prime Cornelian said.

"They cannot be stopped," Sam-Sei said slowly, in his low voice. "They will fight anywhere, under any conditions, in any weather, and require neither food, water, nor oxygen. They can use weapons, or not. Once given a foe, they will do whatever needs to be done until that foe is destroyed. They—"

Prime Cornelian, inwardly excited now, was scratching beneath his chin with a long metallic finger, showing mere interest. "But will they obey?"

Sam-Sei was already turning his back on Prime Cornelian, resting the metal wafer on his workbench top. For a moment he said nothing, as the light-creature continued to stand motionless, Waiting.

"Sam-Sei, will they—"

"They will obey," Sam-Sei said. "I can produce a thousand of them with the equipment I now have. With more equipment, I can produce a million. They can be used here on Mars, where you are currently in need, or the equipment can be transported elsewhere, as required."

"Excellent!"

"But .. ." For perhaps the first time ever, Prime Cornelian sensed hesitation in the Machine Master's voice.

"What is it, Sam-Sei?"

There was further hesitation before the Machine Master turned his head, just enough to look straight into Prime Cornelian's face. "I ask only one thing. That you . . . allow me to
interview
Wrath-Pei."

Prime Cornelian could not catch his intake of breath. "You know that is imposs—"

"Nothing is impossible for you," Sam-Sei said evenly.

Feeling almost foolish with his protestations, but still overcome with the enormity of what he had just witnessed and the possibilities it opened to him, Prime Cornelian said, "I thought our agreement was that he stay on the Outer Planets—"

"And safe?" Sam-Sei said.

"Yes, and safe."

"I do not wait him safe—any longer."

Prime Cornelian made a face near to an insect's frown. "This is something I will have to consider. Wrath-Pei is currently finding much success on Titan."

Turning his back again, Sam-Sei said, "It is all I
ask—Sire."

Sam-Sei ran a lithe hand over the metal wafer and the light-creature abruptly winked out of existence. The four rodent heads fell to the floor and lay inert, one of them staring lifelessly, its whiskers askew, at Prime Cornelian, who continued to scratch at his chin, thinking partly at this moment of Sam-Sei's death and how to, one day, make it creative, but mostly of an army made of light. An army of better mousetraps.

F
rom orbit, Carter Frolich watched a planet suspended between birth and death.

It sickened his stomach. Venus—his Venus—had been a planet crawling slowly, inevitably, beautifully, toward the realization of a centuries-old dream. A true twin of Earth was what it had been becoming. Not a mock simulacrum of the mother world, like Mars, whose lesser gravity, horribly ferric oxide-rich soil, stubbornly thin atmosphere, and just plain bad luck had reduced it to a lesser version of the real thing. Mars would always be Mars, even with a breathable atmosphere, growing (if thin) vegetation, running (thin again) water. It would always be red dust, pink sky, sandstone buildings. It would always be colonists who called themselves Martians. It would always be slightly angry, different, contrary, a place for certain types of men, men who perhaps deserved to be called Martians.

It would always be Mars.

But Venus had been different. It had been like working with the Creator's clay itself, not with a finished planet that had
once, eons ago,
lived and breathed on its own, only to
die and then be resusci
tated by man's terraforming. Venus,
unlike Mars,
had never been born, never known the breath of life that made water run, plants thrive, blue skies fill the heavens like a bowl of flowers each dawn.

And Carter Frolich had been given the chance to make that birth happen.

But now it was being taken away.

As the shuttle neared the surface, each sickening sight was like the stab of a knife point through Frolich's heart. The view of each bright blue plasma detonation tube was a desecration to the temple of the terraforming station it was attached to. It had taken him years to get those feeder stations built, after years of getting them funded. In actuality, Carter Frolich had spent the entire first half of his life doing nothing but smiling and asking for money, pointing to the success of Titan as reason to proceed with Venus. Titan was the experiment; Venus would be the crown jewel of the Solar System. Earth's true twin. In effect, a new Earth. After finally getting that money, from any source he could on any of the Four Worlds, Carter Frolich had planned to spend the last half of his life spending it and making that dream of a new Earth come true.

A potential nightmare now.

"Dr. Frolich, we'll be landing in a few moments, sir."

Frolich ignored the earnest voice of the earnest young man standing behind him as here came the last straw: the sight of the nearest feeder station, the large facility near Diana Chasma, which rose up as they descended, giving him an all too graphic look at the evil blue plasma tube attached to it, looking like an unused booster rocket. If triggered, it would turn the station it clung to into a mass of twisted metal, powdered concrete, and partial planetary death, punching a brown, acidic hole in an atmosphere already ripening with oxygen and nitrogen. If all of those plasma tubes detonated

He turned away in disgust and sat himself heavily in his chair.

"Sir?" the young man, whose face was as earnest as Frolich had imagined under his uniform cap, said. "I'll have to ask that you strap yourself in now."

Looking away from the young man's scrubbed face, Frolich idly pulled the seat belt over his waist and locked it.

"Thank you, Dr. Frblich," the earnest young man in uniform said, and then wisely retreated out of the small, dimly lit passenger cabin and into the crew's chamber.

Taking a heavy breath, Frolich looked down at his hands, which were shaking.

All
of it will be gone.

That was not quite true, of course. Venus was still here and would absorb any thousands of plasma explosions that might be inflicted upon it. But without the continuing puff of the feeder tubes, which had been working without pause for twelve years now, it wouldn't be long before the planet reverted
to its former state: a super-heated, super-dry, super-dead world with a punishing atmosphere, murderous surface pressure, and a thick permanent blanket of choking clouds that rained liquid sulfuric acid onto the bleached surface.

Not the half-green, birthing world it was today, with shallow lakes and oceans filed with crystalline water and genetically adapted fish, budding forests of fir trees healthier than those in the Cascades on Earth had ever been, orchids grown in natural hothouse conditions on the planet's southern hemisphere, a thousand other bits and pieces that were coming together to make a new world, a real Venus, a new Earth—

And now, possibly back to sulfur and death.

Because of war.

Carter Frolich found himself weeping, at first quietly and then in a full-fledged jag, trembling hands covering his face. This had happened many times recently—at an alarming rate, actually—to the point where he was afraid he was losing his mind. He knew now how any parent who loses a child would feel, and he knew that in his own case he would find it unbearable. Recently he had caught himself staring at his image in the mirror during his morning shave, and suddenly realized that he didn't know who he was staring at. A stranger was looking back at him—someone unknown and unknowable, a ghost whose heart had been ripped out. A week ago he had awakened in a glass tube elevator, a relic in a Cairo museum, from a reverie he didn't remember
going into, and had no idea how long he had been on the device or how he had gotten there. Then, for no reason he could fathom, he had continued to take the elevator up and down, from top floor to bottom and back again, until it was time for the museum to close. Luckily, a sympathetic guard, recognizing him, had helped him home.

But all this was something he didn't think about and certainly tried not to show, for the sake of his planet. His Venus.- Because he was the only man, on any of the Four Worlds, with a chance to save Venus and make it the Fifth.

Before Council hearings on Earth, in early Senate speeches on Mars before Prime Córnelian's power had coagulated into iron rule, before Titan's Ruling Elect and the City Council on Pluto's budding Tombaugh City, Carter Frolich had tirelessly made his case, at first for continuing with the transformation of Venus (Frolich considered the term terraforming a Martian term, a label of failure), and then for the salvation of Venus itself. Even after silence had descended on Mars he had continued his dialogue and, though technically illegal, continued it to this day.

And here he was, back on Venus, with nothing so far but failure to show for his efforts.

While his planet waited to die.

And he lost his mind.

"Sir?"

Carter Frolich came out of this most recent episode and for a moment did not know where he was.

Was he back on that elevator, riding up and down, staring outthrough ancient, time-etched glass at his world going from top to bottom? Was he somewhere he had never been before, having arrived by a means unknown to him, for a meeting he knew nothing about? Was he in his own bathroom back on Earth, bloodying his hands on shards of his broken shaving mirror after an attempt to make that unknown man staring back at him go away?

No. He was ... here. On an intershuttle, about to land on his beloved planet—and the earnest young man was back, standing over him, to make sure he was still strapped in, hadn't wandered over to the waist-high window again to stare out.

Carter looked at his hands, which were now resting quietly on the armrests of his chair. They were not trembling, and he was not crying, nor were there any signs of his jag. The tears had dried on his face, and he knew where he was.

He softened his features and looked up mildly at the young man, whose eyes, Frolich now noticed, were light blue under his cap.

"Thank you, Lieutenant . . . Jaeger, isn't it?" The young man brightened
at
the recognition from a great man.

"Yes, Dr. Frolich, it is."

"Very good. We'll be landing in a moment, I take it?"

"Yes, sir. The retros are about to fire now. Just wanted to make sure you were comfortable, sir." Frolich smiled benignly, put out a hand to pat the young man's arm. He wondered how the young man's parents would feel to lose their child. "I'm just fine, son. Done this a thousand times. Is that a hint of Earth German accent I pick up in your voice?"

"Yes, sir." The lieutenant's smile widened. "Munich, sir. At least my parents grew up there. I was raised in Tripoli, myself."

The young man, still beaming, retreated from the passenger cabin; in a moment the door to the crew chamber, filled with brighter lights than the passenger area, closed.

After another few moments, Frolich felt the thump and then whining groan of the retro-rockets slowing the ship down for landing at Tellus Station.

Ignoring the protesting sway of the ship against gravity, Frolich unlocked his seat belt and stood, making his way to the window.

In the far distance, near the green-speckled horizon, the split tops of the belch tubes at Diana Chasma were just visible, before disappearing behind the rising yellow concrete towers of Tellus.

The ship gave a little lurch to one side, then the other as it settled toward its bay.

Unsteadily, Carter Frolich made his way back to his chair and restrapped himself in for landing.

His hands began to tremble again, and he felt the push of tears into his eyes; but he remembered that man he had seen in his shaving mirror before smashing it, the man he didn't recognize—the man who had so calmly talked to Lieutenant ... what'shis-name from ... where? just a few moments ago.

By the time the intershuttle had come to rest, his hands were steady again and his smile back in place, and he remembered the lieutenant's name again.

O
n his wedding day, Jamal Clan finally, reluctantly, sought his mother's help.

"She will not listen to me! And she says she would rather die than marry me!"