Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy Read online

  “You look like you haven’t slept at all!” he remarked.

  “Very little.”

  “Is it your head–?”

  “My head is fine, now.” I thought of telling him of my night worries, but thought better of it.

  Besides, I could hear nothing now in the long, endless stretch of tunnel that lay ahead of us.

  “Shall we march?” Darwin said, offering me a bit of hardtack, which I gratefully accepted.

  I stood up, and we gathered our meager things, and we walked.

  Later in the day, when the walls had darkened for good, the angle of our descent began to sharply increase. Darwin turned up the lamp, trying to peer into the distance, as our feet began to slip on the ice, drawing us down.

  “I have an idea,” he said. He peeled from each of us a blanket and laid it on the ground. “Sit on this,” he explained, “and we’ll slide down. It’s too steep to walk. If you start to go too fast, just dig your boots into the ice to slow yourself down.”

  “Like a kit’s sleigh!” I said, and he laughed.

  “Exactly.”

  But as with all good plans, the execution did not match the inspiration. As soon as we sat down on our respective blankets we began to slide forward, at first at a manageable pace, but then faster and faster. I tried to dig my boots into the ice to either side of the cloth but the slope was now so severe that there was no stopping. With or without blanket we were going down this slide, with no slow-up. Darwin, holding the oil lamp high, raced past me, peering intently into the gloom ahead. With no choice I followed him, my stomach lurching. There was a turn to the left, another to the right and then we straightened out again.

  And then, suddenly, the ride was over and we slowed to a halt as the pitch of the tunnel leveled out and became flat.

  Darwin stood up and gave a sigh of relief. “Are you all right?”

  I could not help but laugh. “That was quite a ride!”

  And then my laugh died in my throat – because, as plain as day, I heard the breathing sound I had heard the night before, only now much steadier and much louder.

  “You hear that?” I whispered, but Darwin had already heard, and was holding the lamp out to the right, moving slowly down the passageway.

  He made a silent motion for me to follow, and I gathered up my blanket and did so.

  Now there was light ahead of us, pulsing and faint. The tunnel bent slightly to the right, and widened. The light grew slowly stronger, and now the breathing became a steady pulse – chuff, chuff – that grew.

  “That’s not a white worm,” I said out loud, in relief, for the sound was too mechanical and unnatural.

  “A what?” Darwin asked, looking at me with a frown.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just the fairy tale that kept me awake last night.”

  He shook his head and walked forward.

  The slight curve to the right continued, and now the light grew brighter ahead of us. Darwin doused our lamp.

  CHUFFFF-CHUFFFF

  We passed an artificial barrier from white ice to hard, white, artificial floor.

  Our boots echoed on the spotless tile of an anteroom, and ahead of us were two tall, metallic silver doors.

  I put my paw on one of the doors and held my breath.

  Beside me, Darwin drew his sword.

  “Go ahead,” he said, nodding.

  I pushed at the door, and it opened –

  – but not into the bright cave of machines and wonders I had expected. The room within was dimly lit and not large. If fact, it reminded me of...

  An old familiar knot formed in my stomach, and I drew back.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My...grandmother and father. This room...”

  “It can’t be the same place.”

  In the middle of the room was a familiar dais, with a not quite empty throne-like chair upon it.

  As we watched a vague form took shape, a ghostly violet image that grew and filled in...

  “I must go,” I choked, not able to face One or Two again, my dead relatives, my grandmother Haydn or father Sebastian was more drawn back to life from the realm beyond.

  I turned, but Darwin blocked my way. His sword was at his side. “Turn and look,” he said gently, taking hold of me and forcing me around.

  I turned, and looked at the shaped form on the chair on the dais.

  My breath turned to a gasp in my throat.

  “An Old One!” I whispered.

  Thirty-One

  It was, indeed, an Old One that Darwin and I beheld. There could be no doubt. The stature – more than a foot taller than either my husband or I – the naked facial features, a flaxen, limp mane of hair covering only the top of the head and drawn down over the low-placed ears, the long limbs, skinny paws and overly elongated fingers and blunt claws – this could be nothing less than one of our mysterious, near-mythical ancestors come back to life.

  The figure sat wan and tired-looking, its blinking gaze unfocused. It was still solidifying, already more solid than my grandmother or father had ever been, not a blue ghost but an almost solid thing. It wore a strangely shaped tunic and sandals on its overlarge feet; the toes, again, were elongated and blunt-clawed, altogether alien.

  And the room was brightening, too, the dimness dissipating, making the specter in front of us less ghostly. Darwin sheathed his sword and, at the sound, the Old One turned its wizened head slowly in our direction.

  “You have come to see me?” it said, its voice weak and broken by static, but decidedly female.

  Its eyes were also strange, large but sunken, pupil and iris malformed compared to a feline eye.

  The Old One blinked, and seemed to take on even more form.

  “Yes?” she said, her voice louder, stronger.

  We stepped forward, and I said, “I am Queen Clara of Mars.”

  “Indeed?” Now the Old One took a deep breath, which seemed to refresh her. She looked down at me with a more piercing gaze.

  “You are a feline!”

  “Of course.”

  “I am told...” She held up a long digit, for silence, and closed her eyes. “My word...” she breathed.

  She opened her eyes again and regarded us. “I am told that I have been in stasis for almost one and three quarter million years.”

  “To us, the Old Ones are nothing but a fossil record,” I stated.

  “Indeed.” Again she closed her eyes and breathed deep. “This comes as a bit of an adjustment. I certainly did not plan on staying ‘in the bin’ for so long – nor waking up to...another species.”

  She regarded us closely, and I became uncomfortable at her stone-like gaze.

  “Are there none at all like me then?”

  “You are the first live Old One who has ever been seen by a feline.”

  “‘Live,’” she said, issuing something like a chuckle, “is a relative word. Reconstituted, more like. I stayed behind by my own choice, but I thought they would return.”

  I must have looked at her quizzically, for she continued, in a tone as if she did not quite believe it herself, “They all went back to Earth. The terraforming went fine, and for hundreds of years, even after the time of the Machine Master and the wars among the Five Worlds, there were colonies on Mars – but then, when Earth was once more inhabitable and the wars ended...”

  She shrugged, as if I would understand, and when I said nothing she leaned forward in her chair and put her huge hands on her knees.

  “Don’t you understand?” she said. “You were left behind. There was nothing on Mars when we came, and we made it habitable and brought the things we knew and loved from home.

  “Cats, for instance. Our pets.”

  I drew myself up with as much pride as I could. “Do you mean to tell me we were hauled here, like so much cattle?”

  “As I said, pets, my...” She thought better of what she was going to say, and addressed me instead as, “Your majesty.”

  I was filled with indignation and ra
ge, but, unaccountably, Darwin beside me was holding his sides and laughing. The Old One had begun to laugh, too.

  “You find this humorous?” I shouted in the little room, but my self-important rage seemed out of place and was drowned out by the laughter around me.

  The Old One held her hands out in supplication, but she was still chuckling.

  “Doesn’t it make sense, Clara?” Darwin said. “Our own fossil record, the growth from dog-size to our present stature, Copernicus’ paper...”

  “I’m afraid it’s true, your majesty.” She gave another laugh. “If it makes you feel better, my own kind developed from monkeys! It is the natural way of things.”

  It was my turn to laugh, and Darwin joined me.

  “It is the natural way of things,” the Old One said. “But still, to see two felines fully developed into sentient creatures. You were left behind when men returned to Earth, and now, well, now you have inherited a world...”

  She shook her head.

  “You mentioned Five Worlds?”

  “Oh, yes, Earthmen colonized Venus and Titan and Pluto besides Mars, and then, of course, there were great wars between them. And at the end of those wars Earth, which had been decimated by plague as well as conflict, became livable again. And also, there was a messenger of sorts from beyond the Solar System...”

  She seemed to be trying very hard to remember.

  “There were many things that happened in my time.”

  “Why did you stay on Mars?”

  “I was too frail to make the trip home, so I consented to be turned into...this,” she said, indicating herself with her strange, large hands. “I loved Mars, so it was not a difficult choice. It was thought that Earthmen would return before long, and try to live here again. I was to welcome them back. But I see that it has never happened.

  “So tell me,” she continued, her hands on her knees again as she leaned over us eagerly, “what has happened in the last one and three quarter million years on my beloved Mars? How has it fared in the Age of Cats, as opposed to the Age of Humans, when war and strife and hatred were rampant upon this land and others?”

  So we told her, and as our story unfolded her eyes became misty, and her face clouded over with dismay and sadness.

  Thirty-Two

  We stayed there for two days, until our hunger overcame us. There was nothing to eat in Stella’s (for that was her Old One, or ‘human,’ name) domain, and only water to drink which Darwin produced by melting ice. The hardtack was gone, and hunger began to gnaw at us like a living thing.

  Stella could rise, and walk around her room, but was unable to leave its walls. She explained in essence how she was preserved, and it was in line with what Newton had known, and deduced, when my grandmother Haydn and my father had been saved – only, in their case, as Stella surmised, the equipment had not been as well protected or preserved as this had been. It turned out that Stella had a secret, but she would not tell us what it was.

  She was curious about my name, and that of my father and grandmother. When I showed her my most precious possession, the Old One book of composers, she was delighted.

  “Ancient Earth composers!” she cried. “I loved their music!”

  “All they ever were to us were pictures. My great-grandmother loved music in general, and that’s where the naming tradition began.”

  “Wait,” she said, and closed her eyes.

  In a moment a sound wafted from the corners of the room, and then built into a full-blooded roaring of instruments, some of which were unknown to me. But the sound was wonderful.

  “That’s a symphony of Haydn, one of his later ones,” Stella said with delight.

  We sat and listened to this strange cacophony, which, in its own way, made delightful sense.

  When it was over, there was a pause while Stella once again closed her eyes, and then a single singing instrument, which sounded as though there were strings involved, came into the room, followed by others of the same. The sound was sweet and ethereal. A glorious chill went up my spine.

  “That’s Johann Sebastian Bach, his Air on a G String,” Stella explained. The look of happiness on her face was surely mirrored on my own. “It’s nice to see that he can still have such an effect after almost two million years.”

  When it was finished she said, “And now to your own namesake,” and produced a piano (which sounded much like the tambon I had labored over since I was a kit) work by Clara Schuman, whose husband, I was informed, was also a musician.

  And then, on that last day, as we prepared to leave, she gave us her secret. I had sensed a growing fondness for her, and I could tell at this last audience that she had made some sort of decision.

  “If what you have told me is true about Mars losing its atmosphere, and I have no reason to believe it is not, then you must do everything you can to preserve life here. And every tool must be made available to you. If humans have indeed abandoned Mars, then it is up to you felines to protect what you have and have inherited here. It is obvious to me that your technology is in the primitive stages. What advances you have made have been through the haphazard discovery of what we humans left behind. This ‘Newton’ you have described sounds like a brilliant fellow, and I will be happy to meet him. But in the meantime, I have decided to turn over to you my storehouse. You must pledge to use it for good and to eradicate this Frane creature you have spoken of once and for all. We humans have always periodically had to deal with evil forces bent only on destruction, and it is an art learned only through blood and sorrow. Any help I can give you I must.”

  And then she told us where to go to find her treasure.

  As we took our leave of her, I was overcome by affection and drew her large body to my own. She put her long fingers into the mane on my head and petted me there as if I were a dog.

  Suddenly she laughed, and pulled her strange fingers away. “I’m so sorry! It’s just that the last time I saw a feline, it was my own house pet!”

  Thirty-Three

  Hunger was catching up with us, and I wondered if we would reach our goal, still deeper into the polar ice cap, before it overcame us completely. But Darwin proved heartier than I, and with his encouragements we at last stood before the doors of the fortress Stella had described. Being white, they nearly blended in with the surrounding ice walls.

  Taking a deep breath, we pushed the doors open.

  At first we saw nothing but a huge empty room. The ceiling and floor were also white. It looked like a massive empty warehouse.

  And then there was a shimmer, and the camouflage unit we had been warned about deactivated, revealing the true contents of the space.

  We stood with our mouths open.

  There in the center of the room was a space ship, long and sleek and wedge-shaped. It vaguely resembled the air ships that Newton had constructed with clues from Old One technology – but this machine was not meant to fly in the atmosphere of planets alone but between them.

  “With this, we could visit other worlds,” Darwin said dreamily.

  “And save this one,” I said, trying to sound practical as I sought to find the entry port which Stella had described to me. The underbelly of the craft seemed to be of a seamless design, with no crack or gap –

  But then my claw scratched across the slight recess I sought, and there was a hiss of ancient mechanisms and a doorway pulled in and away, leaving an oval high opening.

  “Darwin,” I summoned, and he retreated from the aft, where he was studying the monstrous propulsion tubes.

  We entered together.

  It smelled flat and stale, but even now another hidden system was activated and I heard the ssssss of air being freshened and circulated.

  Lights, recessed in the walls and ceiling, went on as we walked, our boots echoing hollowly on the deck of the ship.

  An animated voice crackled into life.

  “What is it you wish?”

  “Guide us to the main cabin,” I ordered.

  “As you say,”
the voice commented, and the wall and ceiling lights dimmed as a row of lit lines formed beneath our feet.

  We followed them through a huge lounge, a sleeping area containing twenty comfortable big bunks, an eating area and attached galley, rows and rows of storage lockers and then, finally, the cabin. A thousand lights and gauges and switches were arrayed around two contoured chairs, with a third chair set behind them. The front windows were thick but clear, floor to ceiling, showing the white room we had just left.

  Darwin sat easily in the captain’s chair on the left.

  “What is it you wish?” the animated voice asked.

  Darwin looked at me, and I sat gingerly down in the companion chair.

  “Shall we?” Darwin whispered to me, and then, without waiting for an answer, he said, out loud, “Take us out of here.”

  There was no response.

  Darwin frowned, and then he looked at me and held out his paw.

  “The code Stella gave us,” he said, and I suddenly remembered and dug the written numbers out of my tunic and handed the paper to my husband.

  Darwin read the numbers out loud, and immediately there was a subtle shift in the machine. “As you say,” the mechanical voice intoned. I heard a faraway snicking noise, which must be the hatch being closed. A humming began deep in the ship which built to a rumble and then a roar.

  A bright light filled the white room outside. There was a monstrous rumbling sound. I looked up and out of the front port to see two white doors hinging open above us, letting in sunlight from an impossibly high distance.

  “Are we going up–?” I started to say as we did, the ship lurching forward and upward at the same time, diving up into the atmosphere even before I had finished my words. We were blinded by sky.

  “Where are we going–?” I said, but again my question was answered before it was asked as the ship came to an abrupt stop.

  It was dark outside now.

  I stood and looked through the front port.

  “Great One in heaven, Darwin. Look.”

  “Stasis position reached. Instructions?” the mechanical voice asked.