The Man Who Loved Mars Page 6

  “I don’t believe—”

  “Shut up until I’ve finished. Do you know what a huakan is?”

  “Those godstones…?”

  “They aren’t godstones, they’re ancestral tablets, memorials, sort of like gravestones. Beautiful tablets of yellow Martian jade, covered with incised hieroglyphics no one alive can read anymore. Each ‘family’ has one; some are a million years old. The luck of a family lives in its huakan’, the deeds and names of every ancestor are carved there. The People venerate them, like Chinese ancestor worship, but without the element of superstition.” I drew a deep breath and went on in a ragged-edged voice. “One day I saw two happy neo-Catholic missionaries waddling home from a huakan ground. They had been about the Lord’s business and were swapping a bottle of brandy back and forth. They had been busy driving the devil from Mars, you see, and helping to convert the natives from their lamentable paganism. I went into the huakan ground and looked around. Those two priests had borrowed a maul and smashed thirty or forty tablets to rubbish. Smashed them into gravel, understand? Irreplaceable tablets that had stood untouched for thousands of years…tablets the worst criminal outcast among the People would rather die than desecrate…laughing, swigging down brandy, taking turns, those happy priests had trampled them into wreckage, because they thought they were idols.” My face felt hard and cold as a mask of bronze. I couldn’t see the girl very well because my eyes were full of stinging tears. “One of those bastards is a bishop right now,” I said.

  The girl was crying, frightened. But I went on brutally, saying the things that needed saying.

  “Do you know how the Colonial Administration really works? Do you know that one Administrator General went home a rich man because he hooked enough natives on heroin—at gunpoint—and made several fortunes having the junk smuggled to Mars on Mandate cruisers and selling it to the poor bastards for gems, furs, and bullion—the price of a fix? Because once hooked on the junk, they would die without it? And the son of a bitch who followed him into office went home wealthy too. All he did was buy two fat Wetlands plantations and stock them with cheap labor. Slave labor. Natives forced into slave chains, also at gunpoint. With the starry flag of the Associated Nations waving overhead.”

  My voice was hoarse and raw now. “I didn’t become a traitor to my own people because I wanted to, but because I had to. Because my people stopped being my people and became my enemies. Because by that time I had fallen in love with this poor, worn-out old corpse of a planet and in love with the pitiful remnants of its once-mighty people. They became…my people. And their cause became mine. And their enemies became my enemies.”

  “And now you’re as bad as we are!” she cried. “If all this is—is true—why are you helping to loot Ilionis of its treasure? You’re gold mad too, like—like grandfather!”

  “Number one, there is no Lost City and no treasure, as the old man is going to find out when we get there,” I snarled. “And number two, I would sell my soul for a ticket here. And maybe I have…”

  She looked at me in bewilderment.

  “What do you mean? No Lost City—no treasure? But grandfather’s thought record…he’s convinced it can’t be a forgery!”

  “And he’s right, it can’t. But it can be a lie or a legend. A document may be authentic as all hell, but that’s no proof that what’s written on it is truth. I know the People better than any Earthman ever has. I know the People, and I know their ways. Their sagas and stories. They lost the bright, splendid civilization they once had when this dustball of a world was fresh and young and new, when it had a rich atmosphere and rolling seas. They like to pretend to themselves that not all of that vanished greatness has departed; that somewhere a bit of it lingers on, like the last remnant of the Golden Age.”

  “You mean…it’s just a fable? You know it’s just a fable, and you let grandfather go on believing it? You kept your mouth shut and let him live in his dream and break all those laws for nothing…just so you could take advantage of his delusion?”

  I said simply: “Would he have believed me if I had told him it was just a golden dream? No. He wants that dream, and he will cling to it at any cost, against any proof to the contrary. And if he is crazy enough to come here in pursuit of it… Well, I’d have to be crazy too, not to take advantage of his offer.”

  And it was just then that a harsh voice rang out, right behind me.

  “Is this dirty Cat-lover messing with you, miss?”

  I started to turn, but before I could, a fist the size of a boiled ham caught me right behind the ear. I went down on my knees hard, slamming against the gritty dust, while the world swung around me in dizzy, whirling fashion. Then I took a boot in the ribs that came out of nowhere and knocked me over on my side; and the world got very dark for a while.

  Then the smell of warm yellow hair was heady in my nostrils, and I pried bleary eyes open to see the girl’s face bending over me, white and scared in the starlight. Somewhere off to the side Bolgov was swearing viciously. I got my head up off the girl’s lap and climbed to my feet unsteadily.

  The Doctor was there, his fine old face strained and serious and a small energy gun clenched in his long fingers. The business end of the gun was trained on Bolgov’s guts. The big man stood straddle legged, his face flushed and angry, nursing bloody knuckles. I couldn’t tell whether it was my blood on his hand or his own.

  “Are you all right, Cn. Tengren?” the old man called in a voice that quavered a little. However unsteady his voice, the hand that held the gun did not waver a millimeter.

  “I’m in one piece, thanks.”

  Then I went over to where Bolgov stood. I reached out and took his throat in my hand in an old Akita grip. He gaped like a fish and went down to his knees in front of me; it was either that or have his throat ripped out. Keresny cried out something sharply, but I was not listening.

  Bolgov gagged and gawked and fumbled at my fingers.

  “Put your hands down at your sides or I’ll ruin you,” I said in a level voice, spacing the words. He did so. Then I leaned down and looked him straight in the eyes. They were wide and full of fear, those eyes, and the whites were sallow and blood-shot, and they were weeping tears of astonishment and pain.

  “Cat-lover,” I said. “This is the second time you’ve used that word on me. The first time I almost broke your jaw. This time I am not going to do anything. But listen to me, Brother Konstantin: if you ever call me by that name again, I’ll break you in half. Believe me.”

  I let go of him, and he sprawled, gagging and spitting in the dirt. I turned on my heel, went past the white-faced girl, ignored the appeal in her wide blue eyes, and went back to my tent.

  It had been a hard day and a busy night.

  I slept like a babe.

  * * * *

  All the next day, as we went on, my eyes kept roaming to the top of the cliffs. The Rill was narrowing, and it was a perfect trap. And they were out there somewhere, that I knew. The Riders of Chun; waiting.

  It was only a matter of time.

  By mutual consent we hardly spoke to one another all day. Bolgov did not speak to me, did not even look at me, at least not while I was facing him. But often, when my back was turned, I could feel his hard, ugly eyes boring into the back of my neck, hating me. I could almost feel the itch in his stubby fingers, yearning for the butt of his gun.

  The Doctor had little to say, sunk deep in his own thoughts. Had Ilsa passed on to him my true opinion of this crazy quest for a lost city that was never there in the first place? Maybe; it was hard to tell what was on his mind. What a diplomat that man would have made! And what a poker player…

  I hadn’t meant to blurt out that stuff about Ilionis. Somehow the conversation had veered in that direction, and I had been carried along with the current. But I hoped that she had not told him what I really thought about the quest; no point in breaking his illusions now. Let the old man dream on, happily anticipating the mother-lode of all treasures… He would have to wak
e up to hard facts soon enough, God knows.

  As for Ilsa, she strode along with her head bent, shoulders bowed under something more than the weight of her light pack. Why had I blurted out all those ugly things to her? Because I was beginning to fall in love with the girl and wanted to defend my honor before her? Traitor is an ugly label to have pasted on your forehead. But I had worn that label long enough to get used to it.

  Along toward noon the Doctor came up to where I was leaning against a rock for a moment to catch my breath.

  “Citizen, do you think we are in any present danger from these Moon Dragon warriors you mentioned? I notice how your gaze keeps straying to the top of the cliffs.”

  I shrugged. “They’re up there somewhere, that’s for sure. They’ll find us sooner or later. And when they do, just let me do the talking. And keep Brother Konstantin away from the guns.”

  “Certainly, certainly!” He cleared his throat nervously. “Do you think we’ll have trouble getting past them?”

  “Not if they accept me for their Jamad Tengru.”

  “And…if they don’t?”

  “Then we’ll have trouble. Lots of trouble. But we won’t be alive long enough to have to worry about it,” I said with a grim laugh.

  “But I understood that all of the native clans recognized you as their holy sovereign.”

  “Well, the Low Clans do. I don’t know about the High Clans,” I admitted. “I’ve never met with them or ridden at their side into battle or shared chardaka under the Twin Moons.”

  “Is there any question that the High Clans, as you call them, will recognize your claim?”

  “There’s always a question, where the High Clans are concerned,” I said shortly. “They are the proudest of a proud people and the oldest of an old race. They are very close to the Timeless Ones, the Martian gods who dwell in the underworld paradise of Yhoom, if you know your legends. They are second cousins to the gods; they are almost gods themselves. The archpriests and the prophets and great war leaders throughout history were drawn from the High Clans. Every Jamad for half a million years has been a High Clansman. Except for the last one, Thyoma, who died in my arms. And me, of course.”

  My words did not exactly reassure him. They were not meant to. When we met up with the war horde, I wanted him to be scared enough to do exactly what I told him to do. And to keep that bloody Ukrainian under control. I told him as much, and he hastened to assure me he would follow my orders. When we met the Riders.

  We didn’t have long to wait, as it turned out.

  That evening we were worn out from a day of staggering through knee-deep sand, so we made camp early, even before sundown. The sky was still light as we started to set up the tents. Ilsa was holding the frame of one as I stretched the fabric tight and sealed it against air loss. Then her hands froze.

  And she stifled a shriek.

  I spun around, and there they were. Twenty…thirty…but I had no time to count them. My heart was in my throat, and my hands were sweating.

  They were mounted on rangy, plateau-bred riding beasts, slidars, they call them. Ungainly, splay footed, awkward red beasts they are, but they move as silently as shadows sliding over the sand.

  They were ranged along the cliff edge, where a long cantilene sloped down into the Rill. They had gathered swiftly, picking their way daintily on silent feet. And those who sat astride the great red slidars were silent too. Tall, grim-faced men with bleak, cold eyes and russet fur instead of hair.

  They had swords, long, whip-bladed rapiers, but they hung scabbarded at their sides. In their hands were long slender hollow black tubes. I knew those tubes from of old, and a cold wind went up and down my spine.

  “Cats!” said Bolgov in an explosive grunt. And true to type, he went for his gun. I slapped it from his hands, and I was not gentle about it.

  “No guns, you fool,” I said. “Those tubes are loaded with darts like hollow needles. They could put twenty needles in you before you could touch the trigger. And one dart is enough to kill you where you stand.”

  His eyes showed white around the eyeball. He was scared, and he showed it, and he hated having me see it. His lips writhed back in a snarl.

  “You lousy coward—I could have had them by now! You may be afraid to stand and fight like a man, but I got—”

  “If you haven’t learned the difference between courage and idiocy yet, you’re not going to get the lesson at my expense. You touch that gun again, and you’re a dead man.”

  “Citizen Tengren, we’ll do exactly as you say,” the Doctor said haltingly. I have to hand it to the old boy; his voice shook a bit, but his eyes were steady.

  “Just stand still and don’t make any sudden moves of any kind,” I said.

  And I started to walk toward the cantilene. I was sweating hard; I could feel it running down my belly and under my arms. But I kept the fear out of my face and made it an expressionless mask.

  I walked toward them, moving slow and careful, keeping my hands away from my sides, even though I wore no guns. Ten or twelve of them had the long slender tubes at their lips. They could kill me with a breath, I knew. I had seen those tubes in action. On a low-gravity planet with a thin, windless atmosphere, a blowgun is a weapon of fantastic range and accuracy.

  Any one of the Riders could have brought down a sparrow on the wing at one hundred and seventy-five paces.

  So I went slow, letting them see that I was coming.

  It might have been the last walk I would ever take.

  It surely seemed like the longest.

  6. The Riders of Chun

  They watched me with narrow, measuring eyes as I walked slowly across the open space toward the foot of the cantilene. When I was near the base, I raised my hands and made the Greeting and the Call to Parley.

  That surprised them! They muttered among themselves and cast me odd looks. Few of the Hated Ones, the F’yagha, have ever bothered to learn the Signs; old Keshkuz had taught them to me, that endless winter we lay holed up in Tharsis, waiting for the White Hawk nation to muster its legions and ride to join us in the holy war.

  One or two detached themselves from the rest and came down the long slope of the cantilene into the Rill. Gaunt, scarlet beasts stepping gingerly, riders leaning back in the high saddles against the steep angle. One of them was a grim, heavy-faced man in his middle years, his fur cap graying about the temples; the other a rangy, long-legged boy with eager, angry eyes, hot for blood.

  A third followed at an amble; a fat little man, looking oddly soft and out of place among the lean warriors. He had a round, innocent face and merry eyes. A thirty-stringed odyar was slung across his shoulders.

  I climbed the rocks to join them at the bottom of the slope. As I came up and took my stand, I made a gesture of courtesy and greeted them in the High Tongue.

  They made me no answer. The older man sat his restive mount easily, looking me over from head to toe with narrow, thoughtful eyes.

  As for the boy, he sat proudly, his smooth young face as fierce and as beautiful as a hawk’s. The fingers of one hand played with the hilt of his sword. He was thirsty for my blood, that boy: eager to prove himself a warrior.

  The fat little harper sat back in his high saddle, smiling cherubically, eyes beaming with humor. He switched his odyar around, cradling it between his thighs, pudgy fingers drumming idly on the old polished wood.

  The heavy-faced, graying man was clearly the one in authority here, for the others waited for him to speak first. His voice was harsh, and his tone peremptory.

  “Now just what are you, F’yagh, that speak the Tongue and make the Signs as if you were of the People?” he demanded.

  “I am of the People, as you say,” I replied calmly. “Despite my birth. My name is Hnoma among the Nine Nations. I have shared water with Prince Thuu of the Red Mountain nation, and his brethren are my brethren. I rode to war under the Red Mountain banner when—”

  The boy hissed like a spitting cat, and his eyes flashed. “What mad
ness do we hear?” he shrilled. “An Outworlder, riding to war against Outworlders? Is this not madness, Uncle Kurak? Are we to listen to these lies?”

  The heavy-faced man, Kurak, reproved him sternly.

  “Be silent, Chaka, or go back to the warriors and let men speak together.”

  “Still not his tongue, Lord,” I said. “The question is one that needs answering. I have in truth turned from the ways of my people to follow your ways. My people have named me outcast and renegade. But what of that? ‘A man must follow as his own heart bids him go.’”

  The grim eyes of Kurak lost a little of their frostiness. “Well, you know the Old Poet, at least, F’yagh!” he said. “But here is a mystery: an Outworlder who speaks the Tongue and knows the Signs and quotes the sagas! Wonder upon wonder, surely. Can it be you know the Law as well? If you ride beneath the Red Mountain banner and have shared water with the Prince of that clan, then show me the sigil thereof.”

  “He wears it not, I’ll wager!” the boy muttered, sneering at me with angry eyes. Those eyes dropped and smooth cheeks flushed as the lord turned a sharp glare upon the youth.

  With slow fingers, being very careful to keep my hands in clear view, lest they suspect me of going for a gun, I unseamed my thermal suit, opened my shirt and laid my chest bare. I let them look at that which was inked deep in the flesh above my heart. Their eyes widened.