The Empress of Mars (23 page)

“The gears don’t like this,” said Manco, forcing the quaddy to climb. “It’s colder up here, Mama.”

“I know,” said Mary, who could feel the glacial cold biting even through her psuit. She squinted up at the cloud cover, grateful for the bright reflection it threw on the mountainside. A few dozen meters back they had passed a prospector, freeze-dried in an attitude of prayer, and marked his position so that someone could do something about the corpse, if anyone was so minded.

But there ahead was the funny-looking escarpment, near enough now that Mary could see the faint play of color on the blood-black rocks. Knowing she had guessed correctly, she said: “Stop here, then. Wait for me.”

Manco cut the engine and braked. Once Mary had climbed out he cranked the wheel around and aimed the quaddy down-mountain, leaned his whole weight on the brake, and settled back to pray.

Mary walked on. She could see depressions in the purple scree here,
impervious to the wind, each one the length of a stride apart. And here they had crossed the gigantic depression made by a ball tire . . . and here, just over this crust of rock . . .

The hole glowed with light, hummed with activity. Then the tone of the humming changed and something black emerged from the hole, flew streaming out. Mary found herself surrounded by black biis, spinning like electrons where they hung in the air around her. She held quite still.

“It’s me, Perrik,” she said. “I’ve come to see if you need any food.”

There was a long pause before the black biis retreated into the hole. Praying under her breath, Mary followed them. It grew significantly warmer as she climbed in; a moment later she saw before her a barrier, a glittering mosaic wall of colors that shifted constantly. It was made up entirely of biis.

Enough of them crawled aside to create an opening large enough for her to step through. She did, and found herself facing another wall exactly like the first, while the first closed up again behind her. The biis before her shifted, making another aperture.
It’s an airlock
, she thought, and stepped through.

The cave was warm and well lit by white lights, drifting here and there, seemingly without the rapid purposefulness of the colored points. They were nearly too brilliant to look at, but Mary got the impression they resembled immense moths. The walls and ceiling of the cave were smooth, ancient melted rock. The floor, however, looked like the aftermath of a sorcerous fire, a pulsing bed of green coals with unidentifiable fragments sticking out of it here and there.

Perrik sat on the floor, his tools around him, making a notation in his buke. He was not wearing his mask.

Mary pulled off her own mask. The air was plentiful, warm and even slightly moist. “Hello,” said Perrik, not looking up. “Yes, thank you, I do need food. I won’t, soon; but in the meantime I’d be very grateful if you have any.”

“Here you are, dear.” She opened a pouch and took out the thermos and case of sandwiches she’d brought. He set down his buke and took them, not meeting her eyes.

“Thank you,” he repeated. “I knew you’d find me.” He opened the thermos’s sipper and drank.

“So the white ones are making oxygen?”

He grinned nervously. “I like intelligent guesses. Yes. I can’t call it a bii, really. I’ll have to make up some other name.”

“Perrik, they’re not really coming after you,” said Mary. “It was a false alarm. You can go home now.”

“I don’t think so,” Perrik replied. He opened the packet of sandwiches. “The BAC will come for me sooner or later, won’t they? Even if the clan keeps appealing, sooner or later some judge is going to order that I stop what I’m doing, drop all my work so I can come make an appearance in court, which I don’t have
time
for, or they’ll send some crew with a holocam to interview me, and that will be even worse because they’ll be filming my lab. No . . . I think I’ll just stay lost, thank you very much.”

“But Perrik, you can’t stay up here!”

“I can, actually,” said Perrik through a mouthful of sandwich. “I’ve upgraded the pollinators. They make—well, not honey exactly, more like honey with vitamins. High water content. The moths make oxygen and heat. The Haulers bring in raw materials and the mechanics are building me a workshop.”

Mary looked down at the seething mass on the floor and realized that the fragments were growing, being added to even as she watched. The biis were building . . . what? Work tables? A bed? All the comforts of home?

“Everything I need and nothing I don’t,” said Perrik with satisfaction. “And this mountain is beyond the British Arean Company’s jurisdiction, isn’t it? I can stay here forever if I have to, with no one to disturb my work.”

“But the clan, Perrik,” said Mary. “They’re frantic, hunting for you. They think you ran away because you were frightened.”

“I’m not retarded,” Perrik replied mildly. “I simply have an autiform disorder. And I was getting a little tired of the way they all took the biis for granted, if you want the truth. Not to mention that everyone just
assumed I existed solely to make them all filthy rich. Half of them want to go back to Earth. I hear them muttering together, complaining. I hear them through the biis. Why would I go back to Earth? I
like
Mars. It’s got more privacy.”

“You can’t mean to shut yourself up in here like a hermit, with no human contact,” said Mary helplessly.

“Hello? Autiform disorder?” Perrik tapped his left temple. “It’s going to be perfect bliss.”

“And your dad, Perrik? What’s he to do?”

For the first time his eyes met hers, then flicked away uneasily. “You can tell him I’m not dead. Tell him it’s only as though I’d gone off to university. Ask him if he’d rather see me carted off to Hospital on Earth. This is so much better! He won’t have to worry about me.”

“He’s your father, of course he’s going to worry about you!”

“Then you explain to him. I’ve always respected you as a sensible woman. You never acted—” His tic spasmed briefly. “—as though there was something wrong with me.”

Mary thought very hard. “I’ll do my best to explain,” she said at last. “I can’t guarantee he’ll understand, dear. You know how he is.”

Perrik relaxed somewhat. “You’ll manage. You’re good with people. I had another favor to ask.”

“Yes, dear?”

“Can I use your solicitor? Tell him I’ll pay him out of whatever I make on the biis, once the patent goes through.”

“I can ask him,” said Mary. “I’ll do that for you, shall I?”

“Thank you.” Perrik closed the sandwich case. He took a last drink, emptying the thermos, and handed it back to her without looking up. “You’d better go now.”

She had turned away, and the mosaic wall was opening for her, when he cried: “Tell Dad I’ll keep sending the biis down. I wouldn’t let the crops fail! And, and if he has a message for me, he can tell the biis. I can hear him through them.”

“Good boy,” said Mary. “I’ll tell him.”

Cochevelou wept, in a quiet corner of the Empress, when Mary told him, the hissing whimpering crying of a large man in mortal agony. Mary sat with her arms around him, her face buried in his greasy mane of hair. She murmured all the comforting sensible things she could think of to say, and bit by bit he was a little comforted. The bottle of Black Label sat unopened on the table before them a long while, though, before Cochevelou lifted his head and took an interest in it at last.

“Just think of it as him going off to university,” said Mary, who had slipped out of the booth long enough to fetch two glasses. She got into the booth on the opposite side of the table from him, and took the bottle from his nerveless hands to pour out a couple of shots. “Only you’ll know he isn’t boozing it up and getting into trouble, eh? Just really applying himself to his studies.”

Cochevelou shook his head morosely. “It isn’t anything near as wholesome as that,” he said. “He’s been pulling away from me his whole life. Baby turned his face away, when I’d go in to kiss him good night, and him not even two yet. Never would hold my hand, walking him to the park or his school. Big sign on his door, said
private
in five languages. I’d go in anyway, when he wasn’t there—room full of amazing things, school projects he’d won prizes for and never even told me. I was so proud . . .”

“It wasn’t you, now,” said Mary, pushing a drink into his hand. “It’s only because he’s different from you and I. The boy was always destined for some grand and strange destiny.”

“Shut up alive in a hole on bloody Mars, what kind of destiny is that?” said Cochevelou with a growl, and knocked back his drink. “You know whose fault this is, don’t you? The damned BAC’s fault, that’s whose. Harrying my boy the way they did, getting him scared. Who wouldn’t be scared? I’ll do murder, so I will. I’ll go in there with a hammer and split a few skulls, and dance in the spilt blood.”

“You will not,” said Mary. She heard the lock hissing and glanced up. To her horror she spotted Mr. Nennius entering the bar. Quickly she lowered her eyes again, praying that he would not approach their booth. She refilled Cochevelou’s glass. “Here’s another way to look at it, my dear, and maybe one you’ll like a little better. Think of those old Christian holy men, eh, who went out alone into the wilderness and became blessed hermits? Living on their own with only the wind and the bees to hear them, in caves as often as not. There they’d stay, dead to the outside world even while they were alive. The ancients called it the Green Martyrdom. And they conversed with angels and grew radiant with wisdom, and worked miracles for the good of men.”

“Old fairy stories,” said Cochevelou, but there was a little less droop to his shoulders. Mr. Nennius, meanwhile, had taken a seat and was staring . . . not at Mary or Cochevelou, but once again at Mr. De Wit, who was working on his buke in his accustomed corner.

“Isn’t it something to be proud of, though? And, look at it like this: your boy knew what he was doing. Only think, now: if the BAC believes he’s dead and the designs for the biis lost with him, then they’ll leave your lot alone, won’t they?” said Mary, lowering her voice to an urgent whisper. “That’s the end of the lawsuit, and it’s bound to reflect badly on them, isn’t it?”

“Damned right,” said Cochevelou. Mary looked into his eyes steadily, so that he would not turn his head aside and notice Mr. Nennius.

“And, listen to me, dearest: it’s just as well the clan doesn’t learn the
truth, either. Let them think Perrik’s lost and dead out there, or sure as the sun rises tomorrow someone will blab to the BAC.”

Mr. De Wit had noticed Mr. Nennius’s presence. He turned to stare at him with an expression of open dislike.
Don’t say anything! Please, please keep mum
, thought Mary. Cochevelou lowered his eyes, stared into his glass.

“Someone will blab? This time a year ago I’d have spit on anyone who’d said such a thing,” he murmured. “The very idea, that there were any informers in clan. And yet, now, I wonder at the lot of them.”

“All the more reason for us to stand together and keep each other’s secrets, eh?” said Mary earnestly. Mr. De Wit and Mr. Nennius were still staring at each other, though neither had said a word. “It’s a hard old iron-red world, after all.”

“My boy. My bright boy . . .”

To Mary’s relief, Mr. Nennius smiled and rose from his seat. He stalked out. Mr. De Wit scowled down at his buke.

“Bright boy indeed, and do you know what he asked me?” said Mary. “Asked if he could get our Mr. De Wit’s advice. Shows he’s thinking ahead, don’t you see? Your Perrik will win fame and fortune with his inventions yet. Mr. De Wit?”

Mr. De Wit rose slowly and came to the booth. He sank down beside Cochevelou, resting a hand briefly on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Ah! But in fact there’s some good news, Mr. De Wit,” said Mary. Leaning forward and speaking in a rapid undertone, she told him about her conversation with Perrik in the cave, and his decision to stay lost.

“. . . And I’m sure what he wants to discuss with you is setting up some kind of arrangement that’ll get him a new legal identity, and transfer his patent applications and all,” said Mary. “He just wants someone else to see to arranging it for him, you know; doesn’t want to be bothered.”

Mr. De Wit drew a deep breath. “As it happens,” he said, “I’ve just had an interesting offer. Polieos of Amsterdam is owned by an international
corporation. One of their other companies is a very promising research and development firm, and they . . . well, they’re very excited about investment opportunities on Mars. It might be possible to cut a deal with them on your son’s behalf, Mr. Cochevelou.”

“You think so?” Cochevelou raised his haggard face.

“I do.” Mr. De Wit swallowed hard. “They’re called Jovian Integrated Systems. I think there’s a good chance they’d pay Perrik a great deal of money for the rights to manufacture and market the biis. And any other Martian technology he cares to develop for them.”

“With a bit of legal fiction, eh, so he’s still protected?” said Mary eagerly.

“His name would never once appear in the contracts,” said Mr. De Wit.

“But he’d still get the money, would he?” asked Cochevelou.

“It would be arranged that deposits would be made into the account of his authorized representative,” said Mr. De Wit. “Which could be you, of course. Assuming he agrees to said arrangement and makes you his authorized representative.”

“And we’d be putting one over on the BAC,” said Cochevelou, with a slow smile.

“Yes,” said Mr. De Wit. “You would.”

“Well, I’d call
that
an offer you can’t refuse!” said Mary. “I expect our Perrik will jump at the chance!”

“He will,” said Mr. De Wit. He looked at Mary’s untouched shot of whiskey. “Were you going to drink that, Ms. Griffith?”

“Help yourself,” said Mary, pushing it toward him. He took the shot and drained it in one gulp.

“All those dust clouds seem to have gone away,” remarked Mr. Rotherhithe, studying the lie of the green. He thumbed in a stroke. The holographic golf ball rose up gently and diminished, projected to a holographic horizon.