The Empress of Mars (13 page)

Had that been the reason he’d come here? Penitence, for disappointing
Mamma and Papa and never being able to make them proud of him? Or petulance and self-pity? No . . .

His mood had been effervescent when he’d heard about the diamond strike on Mars. Real adventure at last! His endless childhood over, and no one to comment or criticize out on the cold red plains of the final frontier. Freedom at last, and the beauty of a new world. And he had wept with happiness when he’d seen the scarlet globe looming on the screen of the shuttle, for all the world like a peach hanging in Heaven.

Though he had been a little disconcerted, it must be said, when he had emerged from the transit lock at Settlement Base and discovered there were no amenities for travelers.

He had wandered up to the Transit Officer’s booth while his Rover was being offloaded, and rapped politely on the window. When the clerk looked up at him, he dialed his translator to
Inglese
and inquired: “Where may I find a hotel here?”

The clerk looked incredulous and replied. The translator had informed Ottorino:
THERE ARE NO HOTEL ON MARTE
.

“I’m sorry,” said Ottorino, “I must have phrased my request badly. Let me explain: I have just emigrated to your beautiful planet in order to prospect for diamonds. I will require a place to live. Is there a hostel or boardinghouse here?”

Now the clerk had looked annoyed, and responded at length, which the translator rendered as:
THERE ARE NO PENSIONI FOR HIRE ON THE PLANET. IMMIGRANTS THERE ARE NOT FACILITIES FOR AND SEARCH FOR DIAMANTI AT OWN DANGER
.

“But where do people live?” asked Ottorino, appalled.

The clerk’s supervisor came out from behind a partition and said something that had the tone of a reprimand to the clerk. Then he leaned to the window and smiled at Ottorino, and said something.
SEE LOVER THERE ARE ONLY OFFICES FOR KISS PERSONNEL BUT YOU CAN FOREVER SLEEP IN YOUR ROVER TAXI RIGHT. THAT IS WHAT MOST OF THEM DO. THIRD AIRLOCK OFF TUBE THREE
.

Ottorino backed off a pace or two. “So then . . . people are living in their vehicles?”

YOU HAVE IT
.

Ottorino quelled his rising dismay with the thought that it was a frontier, after all; he shouldn’t have expected hotels. He would be like the first cowboys on the range, in a way, the ones who slept in the open using their saddles as pillows. At least he would be in a nice enclosed cab with breathable air in it. Yes! Free to explore the Martian wilderness on his own.

“And are there any saloons?” he inquired. “In which to eat and drink.”

THERE ARE A BISTRO AT THE KISS BASE BOUNDARY. UP THE SUBWAY
.

“Thank you very much,” Ottorino replied. “Do you know where I might buy a blanket?”

YOU MAY LOOK AT THE KISS BASE PX BUT I DO NOT RECOGNIZE IF YOU WILL RETRIEVE ANY
.

“Thank you.”

IT IS NOT HARDSHIP LOVER
.

Ottorino had gone off then and held a difficult conversation with the offloading crew before getting his Rover stored at what he supposed was a sort of outer space livery stable. For a while he walked around Settlement Base, which was dull and bleak and smelled bad. He tried to imagine tumbleweeds rolling across the corridors so as to put it into proper frontier-town perspective.

He found the British Arean Company PX and was able to purchase a sort of blanket made of Mylene, as well as Chlorilar pouches of water and dehydrated food. The cashier stared at his mustache but readily accepted his credit disc, and attempted to sell him holocards and souvenirs as well, before he was able to make her understand that he was not a tourist.

He explored the Tubes and found an enclosed agricultural area that looked much more like his idea of frontier prairie, with what he assumed were fireflies flitting to and fro over the tall barley, though the smell was worse there. He imagined he heard cattle lowing. A quick check of the facts on his buke informed him that cows were indeed being raised on Mars, and that pleased him obscurely. He found the
Martian Motel and made a few inquiries about rates, and was pleased to learn that there were none; walked up to the big rig with its flashing colored lights and was equally pleased to learn that there were poker games going on in there, though he refrained from gambling, feeling that he ought to save his money.

At last he wandered up the Tube and found his way to the Empress, where he dined on some rather terrible food while tinkering with the programming on his translator. Nothing he did seemed to make it work any better, so after that he confined himself to smiling and nodding when questions were asked of him. When he emerged to go back to the livery stable, the little sun was setting in a violet pall of dust. His first sunset on an alien world! It only wanted saguaro cacti silhouettes to be perfect, he thought as he drove up to the Martian Motel. Ottorino slept that night, and for many others, curled up on the Rover’s seat.

That had been two weeks ago. His first few days out, he had spent most of his time exploring the Tharsis Bulge, as the one odd little moon hurtled across the sky and returned while the other little moon dawdled its separate way across the heavens. He was diverted to discover what happened to Martian soil when he had to void his psuit’s urine tank into it. He sang as he explored, blissfully happy, and the Rover kept up a companionable drone to his repertoire:
Paint Your Wagon
(the whole musical), “Clementine” (the original tune as well as the party mix version set to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”), and a rousing wordless rendition of the theme from
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
.

“Wah-AH-ahhhh!” he had been screaming, when he came across the first stretch of sullen clay. The scanning program he had had installed in the Rover confirmed that this was the sort of place he ought to be searching for diamonds. Gleefully he had masked up, emerged from the Rover with his pick and shovel and the spectrometer he had brought from Earth, and begun his life as a prospector.

And now, countless hacked holes and exactly one diamond later, he was about to conclude that life. Had it all been worth it? All things considered, he felt it had. It was a splendid death, a lonely and heroic death,
countless times better than dying in a levitrain accident or expiring in his bed from arteriosclerosis and ennui at an advanced age—

Someone was leaning down to peer into his mask. Someone was speaking gibberish to him. He blinked at them. It was someone in a baggy psuit, one of the older models with the fishbowl helmet. Gibberish came through the translator, too. The person leaned down and twiddled the translator’s dial.

. . .
DONATE YOU A RIDE RETURN AND EVERYTHING I AM ASKING IS BUT A CHASTE FEE FOR THE OXYGEN LOOK
.

“Okay,” said Ottorino. More gibberish, and then:

MAYBE WE TIN RESCUE YOUR LIMB
. The person regarded his bent leg critically. Ottorino replied that he hoped that would be the case. The person went trudging down the slope and brought back some of Ottorino’s gear, with which he improvised a sort of splint. This was painful and Ottorino blacked out a few times. When he was fully conscious again, he was being dragged on a sort of impromptu travois. Just like in
They Call Me Trinity!

NICE COGWHEEL YOU OWN
, commented the translator.
UPON MARS RECENT?

“Two weeks,” said Ottorino.

YOU FINAL LONGER THAN MANY OF THOSE. CONSCIOUSNESS IF I POSSESS ROVER IF YOU EXPIRE?

“Yes, of course, whatever,” said Ottorino.

I BE SEAN MCALESTER OF CLAN MORRIGAN. I NO THINK YOUR TRANSLATOR HAVE PANCELTICA VERY GOOD
.

“Is that what it is?”

CERTAIN. NO ANXIETIES DEAR. WE WILL TAKE YOU TO CLINICA QUICKLY
.

At the BAC Infirmary they hooked him up to tubes that rehydrated him and fought off infection, and filled him beside with lovely medication for pain that made it all seem like a splendid game. Then they performed surgery on his leg and implanted stuff to help the bone grow back straight. Then they presented him with the bill, which sent him
into peals of laughter because he was sure they’d stuck on all those extra zeroes as a joke. His new friend Sean suggested that he would take the Rover in trade for the rescue, since Ottorino would probably need all his ready cash for the bill.

Ottorino graciously bestowed the Rover on his new friend and pulled out his credit disc to pay the clinic. Some of his wits were shocked back online when the clinic’s finance officer returned, after an hour, with the disc held gingerly between fingertip and thumbtip. In flawless Italian the finance officer informed him that Importatori Vespucci had declined to pay for his treatment. Stammering, Ottorino had asked about options, and was informed that he might pay off the sum in installments. And what about his hospital care to follow? Oh, there were no hospitals on Mars; and bed space in the clinic was only available to British Arean Company employees with medical benefits.

Quite sober now, Ottorino had paid out what remained of his cash on the first installment and, borrowing a sort of wheeled chair, had followed Sean out to the main concourse outside the clinic.

“What should I do now?” he asked. “Where am I to go?”

Sean had considered that, tapping thoughtfully at his mask.
INFORM YOU HOW: YOU MAY GO TO THE IMPERATRICE. MAYBE MARIA REQUIRE ANOTHER LINGERER. I WILL DONATE YOU A DRIVE THERE
.

With great difficulty they got Ottorino back in the Rover, for his leg in its cast stuck out like a terracotta sewer pipe. Groping to haul himself in, Ottorino’s hand encountered the diamond he had dug up, down by the pedals where he had dropped it. With a sigh of relief he closed his fist on it again and gripped it all the long way up the Tube to the Empress, as Sean fought with the Rover’s gears.

At the lock, Sean got out and helped Ottorino inside, and had a long rambling conversation with the bosomy lady who ran the place. Ottorino meanwhile took off his mask and gulped in the warm steamy air. He became a little light-headed once more. His translator was only picking up bits of the discussion:
GORY INFERNO, DO YOU CONSIDER I AM SPRINTING A CONVALESCENT PLACE and HIM FAMILY HAVE MUCH CURRENCY BELOW HOUSE and CISTERN, I IMAGINE IT WILL NOT BE FOR EXTENDED TIME
.
Ottorino collapsed into a booth and lay back, staring up at the dark curve of the ceiling above him. The unintelligible conversation went on. The woman sounded grudging. The tips of his mustaches, just at the corners of his vision, were trembling. He must be tireder than he thought.

Someone had come to gaze down at him where he lay. He lowered his eyes from the ceiling and beheld surely the loveliest girl he had ever seen. Soft slate-blue eyes, ox-eyes like the goddess Juno’s, skin that held the kiss of the distant sun with the wholesome colors of autumn, firm red mouth. She looked strong. She looked wise. He felt the golden arrow entering his heart, as surely as a bullet from a six-shooter.

“Most beautiful of divine girls, you are the fairest sight I have seen in this whole world,” he said fervently. She frowned, said something.

WHAT RAGATSA MEANING?

“No, no, girl, beautiful girl, exquisite sexy maiden!” Ottorino explained, feeling tears well in his eyes. “This lost cowpoke offers you his soul and his heart, worthless as they are. And, in his supplicant hand, he offers you
this
!” He held up the diamond.

Wondering, the girl accepted it. She peered at it a moment, turning it in her little shapely fingers; pulled over a half-empty mug of beer that had been left on the table and dunked the diamond in it, to wash away the clay and better examine it. Her eyes widened.

MOTHER COLLOQUIAL
!

The bosomy woman, yes, yes, obviously the mother of the beautiful brown girl, left off talking and came to look too. She seized the diamond from her daughter’s hand and stared at it. She shouted something.

MISTER OF HUMOR!

She turned aside to look over her shoulder and Ottorino caught a glimpse of a lean, bearded man with a girl—paler, not so pretty perhaps as his brown one—sort of hanging about his neck. She released the man now and he stepped forward and examined the diamond. He nodded. With an ironic smile, and in perfect Milanese, he said: “Welcome to the Empress of Mars, Mr. Vespucci.”

Another man, an Asian, jumped up and, producing a handcam from nowhere with a conjurer’s flourish, trained it on the diamond and then on Ottorino. The bosomy lady—Mamma Griffith, that was her name, Ottorino remembered now—turned and looked meaningfully at her daughter, and then at him.

WELCOME, GOOD STRANGER. DO NOT ANXIETY. EAT, DRINK, REST WITH US. ROWAN, LOOK HE GET ALL HE REQUIRE
.

They were very considerate, under the circumstances, fixing Ottorino up a sort of tiny room of his own by removing the table from the booth and arranging a bed there instead, since of course he could not go up on the wonderful trapeze-artist flying ropes to the lofts tucked away high in the mossy arch of the ceiling.

But he loved watching them all ascend in the evening and descend again each morning. He especially loved watching the girls, his beautiful Rowan and her sisters, the pale one and the little talkative one. They seemed graceful as angels, Martian fairies, delicate and weightless. At first he wondered at the ropes, before it sank in on him that within a dome of limited space and lighter gravity, it made sense to utilize every possible surface, and the ropes took up less room than stairs or ladders.

Indeed, there was just as much to marvel at in the Empress as outside in the Martian wilderness. He lay there observing the others and was as entertained as though he watched a holodrama. Who were they all, and how had they come to be there? The furtive one-eyed creature who cooked so badly, the nervous skeleton-man, the Red Indian with his crucifix, the talkative Sherpa with his constant holocam. What were their relationships to one another?