by Matt Snee
“It can't be real,” Jennifer repeated.
“I don't know what's real and what's not anymore,” Captain responded. “She's right there in front of us!”
“But she's dead!” Jennifer told him. “Isn't she?”
“Well, yes, she was, I…” Captain thought about it.
“She must be an illusion …or a ghost.”
Captain wondered. He reached out and petted Pup's head, letting his fingers savor the feel of her fur. “She's not an illusion,” Captain said. “I know it. She's not the Fangler. She's Pup.”
“Then she must be a spirit or a ghost,” Jennifer finished.
“Is that so bad?”
“I don't know,” Jennifer said, honestly.
Captain knelt down and embraced the dog again. “I can't believe it,” he said. “I don't know what to think or do. I …you can't understand what she means to me.”
Jennifer had never been around a dog in her life. As a child she had dreamt of pets but was never allowed one. Now, at her age, she was suspect of such relationships, having spent most of her life being jealous of them. She didn't know what this meant, or what to tell Captain, but there was one truth.
“We have to keep going,” Jennifer said.
“I know,” Captain replied. “She'll come with us.” He stood up and pet Pup once more. “C'mon,” he said to the dog. Pup followed him.
He and Jennifer started walking again; Captain stunned and in ecstasy, Jennifer electric with fear. “I don't think you appreciate how insane this is,” she told Lewis.
Captain struggled for the right words to reply. He said what he was feeling. “Maybe the universe isn't so bad, maybe this is a sign. A sign of hope.”
Did Jennifer believe such a thing was possible? She had often convinced herself of the divinity of the universe, but confronted by such a situation made her suspicious and fearful. “There's reasons behind things,” she explained, to herself and Captain.
“I know that,” he said. “But maybe the reasons are good for once. Perhaps she's a message from my mom, or God, or I don't know, somebody who's trying to help us.”
“I just don't believe it,” Jennifer told him.
“I know you don't,” he said. “That's okay.”
Pup trotted beside them, panting and wagging her tail.
* * *
As they walked, Jennifer reached up and took her necklace into her fingers, obviously uneasy.
Captain, meanwhile, was in bliss. This meant something, it truly did. His faith was renewed. Something believed in him, in them, in what they were doing, and this was the help he had needed to keep on this path. He had to admit that before Pup's appearance he was on his last leg, barely keeping together, his sanity frail, and his hopes dim. So what if the solar system was in peril? What had that to do with him?
But now he felt like someone, or something was smiling upon him. Maybe it was just a dog, but it brought the light back into his heart.
“Is Pup from your youth?” Jennifer asked him.
“Yeah,” Captain said. “She was my dog when I was a kid.”
Pup ran off a few paces ahead of them, sniffing at the ground, and then turning her head back to Captain and Jennifer, mouth open in a tongue-filled smile and her tail wagging. As she moved, her dog tags rattled in a sort of jolly noise. “Hi, Pup!” Captain called out to her.
* * *
Captain, Jennifer, and Pup made their way through the caves with a new vigor, buoyed by Captain's revitalized hope. It soon became apparent that Pup wasn't following them, but they were following Pup. They came to a fork. Pup sniffed both directions, and then started to the left. Jennifer shrugged. Men who sacrifice to the gods reach the gods, she thought, remembering the Gita.
They let the dog lead for hours, and they came to no dead end or danger.
“What do you think?” Captain asked Jennifer as he petted Pup, who responded by licking his fingers.
“I don't know what I think,” she said.
“I feel… safe,” said Captain.
“I know you do. But we have to be careful. We do not know who is friend or foe.”
“I'm hungry,” said Captain. “Do you want to eat?”
“Yeah,” said Jennifer.
Pup thought it was a good idea too. Captain fed her bits of the dried meat they had bought off the merchant.
“I'm really tired,” Jennifer told him. “But I don't think we should sleep anymore. I think we should get out of here.”
“How much further?” Captain took a swig of water to wash down the food, and then poured some into Pup's mouth, who lapped at it messily.
“I don't know. It could be hours, or days.”
“There's no sign of the exit?”
“As I said before, this place cannot be mapped. And it doesn't work like normal space. We could be going around in circles. Or we could be going in a straight line.”
“Pup will lead us out,” Captain mused. He believed it.
“Yeah,” said Jennifer. She kind of believed it too. “Are you ready?”
Captain nodded and got to his feet. Pup and Jennifer followed suit. They began to walk again.
“This would be fun if we had a car,” joked Captain.
“Or rollerskates,” added Jennifer. She chuckled. We must be delirious, she thought.
“I once took a road trip across country with my friend Jack,” Captain told her. “We went all the way to California and back.”
“California?” Jennifer repeated, perplexed.
“It's a state in the U.S.”
“Oh, of course,” Jennifer said.
“We had a good time.” Captain sighed.
“I'd love to be able to explore Earth,” Jennifer said.
“You really had never been there before?”
“No.”
“I think that's crazy.”
“I was supposed to go, but my parents died.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve. Thirteen. It doesn't matter.”
“What did you do between then and coming to find me?”
“I don't know,” she admitted. “Stuff. Time kind of just slipped away. I was sad.”
“I know what you mean,” Captain told her, looking her up and down. “But you were all alone?”
She hesitated to answer. “Mostly,” she finally said.
Captain didn't press further.
* * *
Sometime later, a new air came into the cave from somewhere ahead of them. “Hold on,” Jennifer said, digging into her bag for one of her books. She flipped through the pages and then found the line she was looking for. “Do you smell that?” she asked Captain.
“Yes,” he said. “It's not the Fangler. It's something… old.”
“It's Mars,” she said. “My father described it.”
“What does that mean? Are we getting closer?”
“I don't know. Mars would be a dead end for us. We need to go past it to Tiamat. If this way leads us to Mars, then we're in trouble.”
“But we followed Pup,” Captain argued. Hope was burning in him.
“I know that,” she agreed.
“What's Mars like?” Captain had often wondered this in his novels.
“It's terrible,” she said. “We don't want to go there.”
That was all they said of the matter, until they came to a new fork sometime later. Pup seemed undecided, and after sniffing both ways, looked expectantly to Captain and Jennifer.
“This time we decide,” she said.
“What do we do? Flip a coin?”
“No,” Jennifer said softly. “This is important, I can feel it. There is a big decision here, a cross of paths.”
What did the Gita say? No line came to her.
That's when they heard it: the groan, the wail, a sound they had heard before… back on Earth.
“The Fangler!” Captain said, turning.
“I know. It's close.” Jennifer's hands shook nervously. “We have to decide.”
&nb
sp; Captain looked at Pup, but the dog gave him no answer. Then he looked at Jennifer, hoping she would decide. She seemed paralyzed. The Fangler screamed again, hungry, taunting them. It had to be close behind them. How could it have followed them here?
“Well,” said Captain. “Let's go.”
“Which way?” Jennifer asked him.
“The way we go,” he told her, feeling fateful. He took a step toward the right. No matter what happened, that's what would happen.
“Okay,” said Jennifer. “I trust you. Let's go. Let's hurry.”
They started running. Pup ran with them. As their bodies struggled against fatigue and their lungs struggled for air, their hearts raced and their minds second-guessed. Too late, they found a dim red light in the distance in front of them.
“Oh no,” breathed Jennifer as she stopped running. Captain and Pup stopped with her. A new heaviness sunk upon them.
Mars.
The Fangler groaned again behind them, closer this time. They could smell it now: foul but fertile. Pup turned back and growled.
“We can't go back,” Jennifer said, instantly convincing herself of their next plan of action.
“We can't go forward either, right?” Captain asked her.
She did not reply directly. “We can't fight it. My laser doesn't really hurt it. If it catches us, it will kill us, and then …it will be over.”
Captain searched his mind for an answer. I have ideas, he thought. There must be one that will get us out of this. Then it dawned on him. “I know,” he started.
“I know too,” she said. She pulled her laser out and bit her lip. Was there no other way?
“We can stop it and give ourselves time. Time for what, I don't know,” Captain explained.
“I know,” Jennifer said. They were both on the same page. There was no other choice.
Jennifer raised the gun and aimed at the ceiling behind them. Then, without much of a second thought, she pulled the trigger.
The cave roof exploded, rocks tumbling down and dust clouds billowing around them. She continued to burn it away, the laser gun growing hot in her hands. The tunnel continued to cave in behind them, trapping them …but saving them.
Finally she stopped, having completely blocked the path behind them. As the rocks settled and silence roared afterward, they heard one last disappointed wail out of the Fangler as it found the way to its prey now closed.
Jennifer lowered the laser gun and looked at Captain. “Well,” she said.
“It's okay,” he said. “It will work out.” He thought of Pup. Surely what was good in the universe still smiled upon them.
The dog came up to him and brushed against his legs. He smiled. “It's okay,” he repeated to Jennifer.
She was hopeless. If he only knew what Mars meant, what lay ahead, what danger echoed before them.
But then another thought entered her mind. There was still a way to get to Tiamat from here, from Mars, it would just …
Be almost impossible.
She put the laser gun away and ran her hands through her hair nervously. “There's no use waiting here,” she said finally.
They walked ahead toward the dim red light, which grew in strength until a great portal yawned in front of them, revealing the crimson sand and orange sky of their latest challenge, the planet of war, of scarlet hell, and ancient terror. Martian air soaked their lungs and Martian sunlight rewarded their skin.
They stepped out of the cave onto the sand. Then Captain turned and saw that Pup did not follow. She sat in the cave behind them, watching them. “C'mon, Pup!” he said happily, though a sudden emptiness crawled through his limbs.
Pup did not move. She closed her mouth and lay down. “Pup!” Captain tried again. He walked back to her, confused. “Come on, Pup,” he told her.
She did not move. She looked up at him, sad.
“I think this is as far as she is allowed to go,” Jennifer said, knowing from her father's books the rules some spirits had to follow.
“No,” said Captain. “She's coming with us, she has to. She's helping.”
He took out a piece of food and tried to lure her out of the cave, but had no luck. “Pup?” he asked the dog, hoping for a different answer than Jennifer's theory. But he knew in his heart that she was right, that whatever blessing this was had come to an end.
“What will happen to her?” he asked.
“Only God knows,” Jennifer said.
“Will she go back to where she came from?”
“I imagine so. Maybe her work is done.”
“I love her so much,” Captain admitted. “I forgot how much, with my mother gone, seeing Pup again, I…”
Jennifer put her hand on his arm and smiled, trying to make him feel better. “I know.”
He crunched his face up as he could feel tears in the bottom of his eyes. He knelt and petted Pup's head one last time. “I'll miss you, Pup,” he told the dog.
Pup opened her mouth and smiled. She let out a short whine and then was silent, turning her eyes up to his.
“Okay,” said Captain, rising to his feet. He looked to Jennifer, who did her best to comfort him with her eyes.
They turned and took their first steps onto Mars. Captain looked back one last time, but when he did:
Pup was gone.
12. Awake the Martian Twilight
Life may not be real … but death is.
Phrase written on ancient Martian coins
It wasn't long afterward that Jennifer was confronted with her own past.
They were on Mars now. The tunnel came out of a huge black mountain. They stood at its base, looking out across the red desert. The sun hung like a white splotch above them. Captain could still feel its warmth, like a light bulb's when you're naked in a cold room.
“Now what?” Jennifer asked herself.
Captain turned to her and found her frowning and disgruntled. “Is it that bad?” he asked.
“It's bad,” she said. “But there's a chance. We still have …a chance.”
“What do we do?”
“We have to find another way into the tunnel,” she told him. “Or we can find an old Martian space ship that still works.”
“Which one do you suggest?”
She laughed bitterly. “I'm afraid either will be next to impossible.”
Captain bit into his lip. “Dammit, we're not going to give up here.”
“I know,” she said. “I'm sorry. I'm just … I'm having a hard time keeping it together, I think I've reached the end of my rope.”
“It's not over yet,” Captain told her. “We still breathe.” On Mars, he added to himself.
“Yeah, I know.” She took a deep breath. “Let's go.”
They made their way across the harsh landscape, climbing one small hill after another. The two of them continued through the sand. Wind would pick up and blow dust around sometimes, and they would have to shield their faces. Most of the time everything was still.
“We're on a path, Lewis. Look.” Jennifer pointed to the ground. She was right. There was a path that they were following.
Captain smiled. It gave him hope.
Then she saw a light upon the top of the next hill in front of them. “What is that?” she asked him.
“What?”
“That light?”
“I don't see anything.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
She swallowed hard. That could only mean one thing. As they approached, she saw what it was: a sort of spirit bubble encasing two beings, surrounding them like a sphere of light. She didn't ask Captain again if he could see it; she knew he couldn't. She always sort of suspected that only she could see these, but she had never put it to the test until now.
It was a clone-warp. She had not seen one since the Devasthanam.
Inside the bubble were two apparitions: her parents. They stood at its center, holding hands and speaking to each other. It was a copy of a moment of time, displaced in time, a loop rep
laying itself over and over for just her to see. If she didn't know the truth, she would think herself insane, but this curse had been brought upon by her own actions.
Her parents had probably been here long before she was born, dangerously exploring the planet by themselves, using the worm caves to get here. The tall, dark-haired, bookish man; the beautiful Indian-looking princess with hair like her daughter's …they were as clear as day.
She could hear their voices now: the soft, French-tinged baritone of her father, the sonorous voice of her mother. Here they were, at the height of their youth. They looked so innocent, like tourists, a camera hung from her mother's hip and a map fluttered in her father's hands. The explorer and the aristocrat, carelessly walking the most dangerous planet in the solar system, like they were on vacation.
Her father was speaking, but she could not make out what he was saying. It sounded jumbled, degraded by time and space, his voice just sound. When her mother responded to him, it was the same, but certain words escaped: Journey. Adventure. Love.
Then the clone-warp peaked and flipped back to the beginning again, just a short loop of a moment. Her father spoke again. Her mother responded. Then again. And again.
Captain noticed something was wrong with Jennifer as her eyes were locked on something he could not see. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
Jennifer turned her eyes to his and shielded herself from the sight of the clone-warp. This was her fault. If she hadn't …
But she had.
“Yeah,” she told Captain. “I'm okay.”
* * *
When the first Martian moon arose, the buzzing began—an infernal noise that was all encompassing, horribly loud, and vibrating in their bones. It rumbled at the edge of everything, and both Captain and Jennifer were disoriented by the sound.
“What is that?” Captain shouted over the din.
“It's the Braconids!” Jennifer answered. “Giant insects, like us. They used to be the Martians until they… decayed.”
“It sounds like there's millions of them!”
“There are! Come on!” Jennifer led the way.
Captain could not believe his ears. He could not believe that such a naked, sharp persistence could exist. He did his best to bear it and followed Jennifer. He trusted her a little bit more now. And insane as this was, he was glad they had left the laser caves.