The Empress of Mars (35 page)

“Oh Blessed Virgin, oh Holy Mother, Dios y Nantzin, Woman of Precious Stone, Seven Flowers, Bringer of Maize, please please
please
don’t let the brew tanks tear loose!” begged Manco.

Floor upward—

Righting itself—

Going over again, oh no, was the floor going to crack right open?—

Still tumbling—oh, don’t let it settle on its side, it’ll split open for sure—

Righting itself again—

And then a colossal lurch as the wind hit the Empress, only the ordinary gale force wind of Mars now but enough to sail anything mounted on ag units, and Mr. Morton thought:
We’re going to be blown to the South Pole!

Something dropped toward them from above, and both men saw the Heretic hurtling past, still clutching the stress telltale as well as a long confusion of line that had become wrapped about her legs. She regarded them blankly in the second before she went through the floor, which opened now like split fruit rind. The line fell after her and then snapped taut, in the inrush of freezing no-air. There was a shuddering shock and the Empress strained at what anchored it, but in vain.

The men yelled and sucked air, clutching at their masks. Staring down through the vortex of blasting sand, Manco saw Mr. Morton’s neo-Gothic pumping station with the stress telltale bedded firmly in its roof, and several snarls of line wound around its decorative gables.

And he saw, and Mr. Morton saw, too, the Heretic rising on the air like a blown leaf, mask gone, her clothing being scoured away but replaced like a second skin by a coating of sand and blood that froze, her hair streaming sidelong. Were her arms flung out in a pointless clutching reflex, or was she opening them in an embrace? Was her mouth wide in a cry of pain or of delight, as the red sand filled it?

And Manco watched, stunned, and saw what he saw, and Mr. Morton saw it, too, and they both swore ever afterward to what they saw then, which was: that the Heretic turned her head, smiled at them, and
flew away into the tempest
.

“Take us back!” Mary shrieked. “Look, look, it’s been blown halfway up the damn mountain, but it’s still in one piece!”

The Brick dutifully came about and sent them hurtling back, through a cloud of sand and gravel that whined against the freighter’s hull. “Looks like it’s stuck on something,” he said.

“So maybe everybody’s okay!” cried Mona. “Don’t you think, Mum? Maybe they just rode inside like it was a ship, and nobody even got hurt?”

Mary and the Brick exchanged glances. “Certainly,” said Mary. “Not to worry, dear.”

But as they neared the drilling platform, it was painfully obvious
that the Empress was still in trouble. Air plumed from a dozen cracks in the dome, and lay like a white mist along the underside, eddying where the occasional gust hit it. Several of the ag units had broken or gone offline, causing it to sag groundward here and there, and even above the roar of the wind and through the walls of the cab, Mary could hear the Empress groaning in all its cantilevers.

“Mum, there’s a hole in the floor!” Mona screamed.

“I can see that. Hush, girl.”

“But they’ll all be dead inside!”

“Maybe not. They’d masks, hadn’t they? Mr. Brick, I think we’d best see for ourselves.”

The Brick just nodded, and made careful landing on the high plateau. They left Mona weeping in the cab and walked out, bent over against the wind, deflecting sand from their goggles with gloved hands.

“
YOU GOT UNITS FOUR, SIX, AND TEN DEAD, LOOKS LIKE
,” announced the Brick. “
IF WE SHUT OFF TWO, EIGHT, AND TWELVE, THAT OUGHT TO EVEN OUT THE STRESS AND LET HER DOWN SOME
.”

“
WILL YOU GIVE ME A LEG UP, THEN, PLEASE
?”

The Brick obliged, hoisting Mary to his shoulders, and there she balanced to just reach the shutoff switches, and little by little the Empress evened out, and settled, and looked not quite so much like a drunken dowager with her skirts over her head. Mary was just climbing down when Alf and Tiny Reg pulled up in their freighters. Chiring scrambled from Alf’s cab and came running toward her with his cam held high.

“
UNBELIEVABLE
!” he said. “
IT’S AN ACT OF THE GODS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! NARROW ESCAPE FROM CERTAIN DEATH! FREAK STORM DEPOSITING BUILDING INTACT ON VERY SITE INTENDED! MARS’S FIRST RECORDED MIRACLE
!”

“
SHUT THE DAMN THING OFF
,” Mary told the audience of Posterity. “
WE’VE GOT PEOPLE INSIDE
.”

Chiring gulped, seeing the wreckage clearly for the first time. He ran for the Empress, where the Brick was already taking a crowbar to the airlock.

“MUM!”
Rowan jumped from the Rover, which had come rocketing around on its tether of tow cable and screeched to a halt, spraying gravel everywhere. She reached her mother just as Mona did the same, and they clung to Mary, weeping.

“
HUSH YOUR NOISE
!” Mary yelled. “
WE’RE ALIVE, AREN’T WE? THE HOUSE IS HERE, ISN’T IT
?”

Ottorino walked forward and stopped, staring at the spectacle the Empress presented. “
THIS IS LIKE THAT OTHER MOVIE
,” he said. “
THE ONE WHERE THE GIRL GOES TO MUNCHKINLAND
.”

“
DAMN YOU, MUM, WHAT’LL WE BREATHE UP HERE
?” Rowan yelled back. “
HOW’LL WE LIVE? WE’LL FREEZE
!”

“
THE GODDESS WILL PROVIDE
!”

Rowan said something atheistical and uncomplimentary then, and Mary would have slapped her if she hadn’t been wearing a mask. As they stood glaring at each other Mary noticed, far down the slope below Rowan, a traveling plume of grit coming up the road. It was the CeltCart. There were two persons in it.

By the time the cart reached the plateau, Mary had armed herself with the Brick’s crowbar, and marched out swinging it threateningly.

“
COCHEVELOU, YOU’RE ON MY LAND
,” she said. She aimed a round blow at his head but it only glanced off, and he kept coming and wrapped his arms around her.

“
DARLING GIRL, I’M BEGGING YOUR PARDON ON MY KNEES
,” said Cochevelou. Mary tried to take another swipe at him but dropped the crowbar.

“
HOUND
,” she gasped, “
GO BACK TO EARTH, TO YOUR SOFT LIFE, AND I, ON MARS, WILL DRY MY TEARS, AND LIVE TO MAKE MY ENEMIES KNEEL
!”

“
AW, HONEY, YOU DON’T MEAN THAT
,” Cochevelou said. “
HAVEN’T I GONE AND GIVEN IT ALL UP FOR YOUR SAKE? I’M STAYING ON. SO’S MY BOY
.”

Mary peered over his shoulder at the CeltCart, where Perrik sat like a bright ghost in a whirling cloud of raging biis. Farther below, making their way up the mountain like chicks scurrying after a hen, were the survivors of the Martian Motel, led by the Excelsior Mobile Card Room, Painless Dentistry Parlor and Investment Brokerage.
Goddess
, thought Mary,
surely we aren’t the only survivors?

She clutched at Cochevelou, noting the preponderance of tools he had brought with him: anvil, portable forge, pig iron . . . and she thought of the thousand repairs the Empress’s tanks and cantilevers would now require. More than repairs: a whole new city to be built.

Drawing a deep breath, she cried: “
OH, MY DEAR, I’M THE GLADDEST WOMAN THAT EVER WAS
!”

“
MUM! MUM
!” Mona fought her way through the blowing sand. “
THEY’VE COME ROUND
!”

Mary broke from Cochevelou’s embrace, and he followed her back to the cab of the Brick’s freighter, where Manco and Mr. Morton were sitting up, or more correctly propping themselves up, weak as newborns, letting Ottorino swab BioGoo on their cuts and scrapes.

“
ARE YOU ALL RIGHT, BOYS? WHERE’S THE HERETIC GONE
?” Mary demanded.

Mr. Morton began to cry, but Manco stared at her with eyes like eggs and said, “There was a miracle, Mama.”

Miracles are good for business, and so is the attraction of a hot bath in a frozen place of eternal dirt, and so are fine ales and beers in an otherwise joyless proletarian agricultural paradise. And free arethermal energy is very good indeed, if it’s only free to
you
and costs others a packet, especially if they have to crawl and apologize to you and treat you like a lady in addition to paying your price for it. So is having the exclusive patent on pollinating microbots, in a rapidly expanding agricultural economy.

Five years down the line there was a new public house sign, what with the Queen of England being scoured away at last by relentless grit, and a fine new sign it was. Two grinning giants, one red and one black, supported between them a regal little lady in fine clothes. At her throat was the painted glory of a red diamond; in her right hand was a brimful mug, and her left hand beckoned the weary traveler to warmth and
good cheer. Inside, in the steamy warmth, Sherpas drank their beer with butter.

Five years down the line there was no rebuilt Temple of Diana; only a modest Ephesian Mission, a meek supplier of soups, herbal teas and pamphlets to any interested takers. But on the mountain there was a second stone figure in its own grotto, a new saint for the new faith. It resembled nothing so much as the hood ornament of an ancient Rolls-Royce, a sylph leaning forward into the wind, discreetly shrouded by slipstream short of actual nakedness. Its smile was distinctly unsettling. Its one eye was a red diamond.

Five years down the line there were holocards on the back bar, all featuring little Mary De Wit of Amsterdam, whether screaming and red-faced for the camera in her first bath, or holding tight to Mr. De Wit’s long hand while paddling her toes in the blue sea, or smiling like a sticky cherub before a massed extravagance of Solstice presents and Chanukah sweets, or solemn on her first day of school.

Five years down the line Emporium di Vespucci had relocated into three connected domes farther up the mountain, vast and magnificent, stocking everything a growing community could desire to furnish the blocks of flats that were being dug into the lots fronting the new Commerce Square. Three little Vespuccis rode their tricycles up and down the Emporium’s aisles, pretending to be cowboys riding the open range.

Five years down the line there was indeed a Center for the Performing Arts on Mars, and its thin black-clad manager put on very strange plays indeed, drawing the young intellectuals from what used to be Settlement Base, and there were pasty-faced disciples of Martian drama (they called themselves the UltraViolets) creating a new art form in the rapidly expanding city on Mons Olympus.

Five years down the line, Haulers roared along the completed High Road in as much safety as Mars afforded, which was still more danger than a sane man would face, and the ones who perished became legends. Somewhat more prudently, Crosley & Peebles Enterprises operated its fleet of mobiles closer in to Mons Olympus, offering high-rolling
entertainment, dentistry, insurance policies for any eventuality, the finest in escort hospitality for both genders, and pharmaceutical notions.

Five years down the line a thriving community had grown up around the old Settlement Base and former clan lands, calling itself, with proud lack of imagination, Mars One. There were long green fields spidering out along the Martian equator and even down to the lowlands, because that’s what a good socialist work ethic will get you, and many little socialists born, because that’s what the life force produces on any world. It must be admitted there had been some grumbling about the cost of renting biis for pollination, however. Up in the city they called Mars Two, the bright nano-rainbow flitted free of charge, through domed rose gardens planted to the greater glory of Her who smiled serene in Her cloak of stars, Mother of miracles like roses that bloom in despite of bitter frost.