Jeffrey had recovered at this point, and I could feel his anticipation grow.
“Pelltier, are you sure–”
“Oh, this one’ll cost you, Jeff, and a pretty bit of change, too.”
We walked beyond the last tent, and kept walking, Jeffrey running ahead to catch up to Pelltier now.
The two of them went over a small rise and then down the slope, and when I caught up with them they were already in a wide pit. Jeffrey stood with his eyes wide.
“The trick,” Pelltier was explaining, “was to move off the shoreline. I thinks to myself, if they was here, wouldn’t they move back a bit from the edge of the water? More comfortable like. So I ‘ad my boys dig around, and soon they comes up with Mr. Ugly ‘ere. Actually, we calls ‘im Rex, just as a joke, you see.”
I climbed down into the pit and stood next to them.
“It’s marvelous!” Jeffrey exclaimed.
Pelltier laughed. “Not a good bargaining tactic, friend. Your price jus’ went up twen’y percen’!”
It was the skeleton of...something. It was long and partially twisted along its length, as if it had died in agony. It was similar to a feline skeleton but definitely not feline. For one thing it was a bit taller, and the skull was more elongated, the teeth blunter. The paws were not paw-like, the finger bones longer and ending not in claw retractors but just ending. I had a hard time imagining what that paw looked like in life. The feet were similar, the ankle bone more angular. It was a very strange specimen.
“I must have it!” Jeffrey enthused.
Pelltier slapped him on the back. “That’s what I was counting on, ol’ Jeff! We can start da price wi’ girly, here!”
“What?”
“The missy! Ransom! We can start by t’rowing ‘er into the bargain!”
“That’s out of the question!”
Pelltier’s face darkened. “Why?”
I said, “Because I don’t belong to anyone.”
Pelltier looked at me closely. “I bet you don’t at dat.” He stared at me for a few more seconds and then sighed. “All ri’ then. Worth a try, it was.”
From then on he totally ignored me, and he and Jeffrey got down to serious negotiations.
By the time Merlin arrived with the truck two hours later, the fossilized remains of Rex were ready to be loaded into the bed. Pelltier begged us to stay for a meal, but Jeffrey, excited by his acquisition, wanted to get it home.
As we were getting ready to leave Pelltier came up to me and bowed.
“Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but you would ‘ave made a fine girly.”
“I’m sure,” I said coolly. “Is there anything you wouldn’t buy and sell?”
“Not that I can think of.” He laughed.
“How do you keep the F’rar from bothering you?”
He laughed even harder. “Oh, dey tried,” he said. “Dey tried, and good. But they found in the end that it was easier to deal with us den bother us.”
“So you give them what they need and want.”
His laughter died as if a switch had been thrown. “I wouldn’t exactly say that, ma’am.” He bowed, and went to make final arrangements with Jeffrey.
On the ride back I asked Jeffrey what he had given Pelltier in exchange for Rex.
He considered a moment, and then said, “Some scientific equipment and other goods. The usual.”
“Aren’t you afraid the technology you give him will end up in the hands of the F’rar?”
Jeffrey blinked. “I hardly think so. Pelltier is one of the fiercest rebel fighters in these parts.”
I considered this, and felt better about the rack of cigarettes I held in my hands. I reached into my tunic and brought out the single cigarette Pelltier had given me, and lit it.
“By the way,” I asked Merlin, after I had lit the cigarette and felt the first hot, acrid bite of tobacco I had tasted in months, “do you know what Pelltier meant by calling me a girly?”
Merlin frowned in thought, and then said, “I don’t know much about the customs of these pirates. I did pass a tent filled with women of questionable employ, though.”
“Yes,” I said. “I passed that tent.”
Jeffrey looked confused, so Merlin explained.
“What!” Jeffrey cried in astonishment, stopping the truck (though I noted gently, so as not to disturb his treasure in the back). “You mean he wanted to buy Ransom here for...?”
“Could be!” Merlin answered evenly, and winked at me.
As Jeffrey, blubbering outrage, started the truck up again and drove on, I looked out the window, and smoked, and said nothing.
Fourteen
More weeks went by. The high heat of the summer came, and, just as quickly, passed. I fell into a routine of sorts: up at dawn, breakfast with Newton, a few hours of apprenticeship with Merlin or Jeffrey and then the afternoons to sit in Newton’s garden reading one of his books, or, if the spirit took me, a few minutes of bad music-making on the upright tambon in Newton’s living room. I made what I thought were discreet inquiries as to what went on in the chambers below which Merlin and I had stumbled onto that day, but found that most of the others were not even aware of it, or at least cared not to acknowledge its existence. The door never appeared again while I watched.
One day while waiting for Newton to appear for dinner I drew down from the shelf in his study the picture book he had shown me that first night. It was a warm afternoon, the last of the hot days, and too uncomfortable to sit in the garden. The pink sandstone of the house provided a cooler reprieve, and I decided to stay in the study and read.
I opened the book at random, trying to match the skeletal outline of Rex in my mind to that of the pictures I saw. Unfortunately, most of them were not standing figures but busts or head and shoulders only – and then I flipped the pages and the book opened to a particular page and I caught my breath.
The caption under the figure said: FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN.
And under that: Composer.
It was a full figure of an Old One with a mane of white hair and a chiseled, somehow noble look on his ugly, near naked face. His eyes looked kindly, though, and in his long frame I could almost superimpose the bones that Jeffrey had purchased from Pelltier.
This, then, was the true origin of my name!
My mother, who had been so in love with music, must have known. I flipped through the book looking for other composers and found two: a funny-haired fellow named Johann Sebastian Bach and a female Old One named Amy Beach. There were pages missing from the book, though, and I supposed there were other music makers among the missing.
I turned back to the picture of Haydn and sat staring at it for many minutes. I was so engrossed in it that at first I didn’t hear the moaning issuing from somewhere in the house.
And then I did.
These were the same sounds I had heard nearly every night since staying in Newton’s home. If I had not come to take them for granted, I had long ago assumed they were produced by strange Newton himself – perhaps bemoaning the loss of the daughter in whose room I slept. He had admitted her loss once during dinner, after an extra glass of wine, but then offered no explanation. The next time I had broached the subject with him; he had turned cold and distant, and made it all too apparent that I was not to bring it up again.
But it was not Newton who cried. For he was not home – was, in fact, hours away on an expedition with Merlin south of the city. The two apprentices were not home, either. They had left hours earlier on their weekly shopping chores.
I was alone in the house.
The moan came again, a mournful, distant sound.
I was not alone in the house.
I put the book back in its slot on the shelf and began my search at the far reaches of where I had been allowed in the past. I found nothing, and the sounds came from a different part of the building. Newton’s own bedroom was off a second hallway near the front of the house. It was usually locked, but today it had been left open. By now the bereaved sounds had stoppe
d, but I searched the room anyway, looking for hidden panels and doors. There were none I could find. The room was sparsely furnished compared to the rest of the house – a large bed platform, without head or footboard, a simple red coverlet. There was a plain bed stand and dressing table, and a large mirror. There were no pictures on the wooden-paneled walls.
I heard a moan again, and it seemed tantalizingly nearby, though not in the bedroom.
I retreated into the short hallway and waited.
The moan came again, to my right, where the bedroom was, but now muffled.
I went back into Newton’s bedroom.
When the moan repeated, I went as if drawn by a magnet and stood before the full length mirror.
I felt along its edge, and, sure enough, it drew back on hidden hinges as a door, revealing a long, cool tunnel.
“Hello?” I ventured.
I was met by silence.
I stepped into the tunnel, feeling its immediate chill. There was air circulating here. I found a vent above my head, and another a few feet farther on. It was dark, and I ended up feeling my way along the cool sandstone walls.
This tunnel had been dug into the rock which bordered the house, and was not a part of the main structure.
I became alarmed when the tunnel made a sudden turn. There was no light behind or before me. But then a heard the moan again, closer, and proceeded.
“Hello?” I called again.
There was an answering moan that was coincidental with my call, I was sure.
Abruptly, I found myself faced with a blank doo that was as wide as the tunnel.
Air moved from beneath what must be a door, a cool, steady breeze.
I knocked on the door, and was met with silence.
There was no knob, no handle.
I was faced with, I thought, a moral choice at that point. This was none of my business. Whoever was behind that door was part of Newton’s life, and had nothing to do with me. I should not even have come this far.
Suddenly, I resolved to go back, and turned around.
My path was blocked by a tall figure standing there.
“You might as well see her,” Newton’s voice said.
His tone was neither surprised nor angry. He sounded resigned. He moved around me, and did something to the door, which opened with a hiss. A dull light, bright in comparison with the darkness of the tunnel, issued forth.
“Please follow,” Newton said quietly.
We were in an ante chamber, and a second door led to the main room. It was chilly to the point of being cold, and the same faint yellow light filled this second place. There was a bed similar to the one in Newton’s bedroom – in fact, the room was a duplicate of it, down to the full length mirror and the dressing table, which held a framed picture of a feline unknown to me, short and middle-aged with a grim, almost distrustful face.
The bed was empty. But a chair faced the mirror, and in it sat, I could see by the mirror’s reflection, a very old woman, seemingly asleep. I had expected perhaps Newton’s young daughter, but had been mistaken.
The woman’s eyes opened, and she stared at the mirror and moaned. Then she fell into troubled slumber again.
“She is my wife, Arma,” Newton said. He had not taken a step toward the woman, but stood regarding her, I thought, with a mixture of pity and disgust.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
“Everything,” Newton said, in the same even tone. “She refuses to face the world.”
I could tell that there would be more, so I said nothing.
“When our daughter died, five years ago,” Newton went on, “Alma became increasingly withdrawn. At first she refused to leave the house, and then she refused to leave our bedroom. And then, finally, she refused to leave her chair. The doctors could do nothing for her, and finally they gave me the choice of keeping her here permanently or sending her to an institution. I had this room built as an exact duplicate to our bedroom, and here she stays. She is attended to, and, despite an occasional moan, usually in the night, this is how she exists.”
“It must be horrible for her,” I said, shocked.
Newton turned to regard me. “In some ways she is the lucky one.”
I was further shocked at his tone, which sounded almost cold.
“How can you say that?” I replied. “The woman lost her daughter; it must have been a terrible thing to bear.”
He was staring at me. “Her brother Talon killed our daughter,” he said, and left the room.
At dinner that night he told me the rest of the story. I noticed that he drank more than his usual measure of wine. The stewards were almost constantly at his elbow with the bottle.
Finally he told them to leave the bottle with him, and withdraw, which they did.
“You must understand something,” he said, with a slight slur in his speech. “My wife’s family was fiercely loyal to the monarchy. Her family is one of the oldest in Northern Mars. The king was one small step lower than a god to them. When the monarchy was dissolved by Augustus of Argyre they did everything they could to reinstate it, providing money and support, and, when necessary, soldiers to the monarchists, the F’rar included. This is one of the reasons why the F’rar trust me, even though they are unaware that I was never in agreement with my wife. In those days I mostly avoided the issue. I had my work to keep me busy. This, of course, was before the days of the secret Science Guild, when science could be done openly.
“But when our daughter Penelope came of age, she became a staunch republican, which infuriated Alma and especially her brother, Talon, who was working with me at the university at the time. Despite his politics, Talon and I were very close. He was brilliant. But his disapproval of his niece’s positions bordered on the obsessive. Not only did Penelope support the republic with her words, but with her inheritance.”
He stared through his wine glass for a moment, lost in recollection. “This dinner table was an unhappy place for a long time. The arguments they had...”
He put his glass to his lips and drained it, then reached for the bottle and refilled his glass.
“When Augustus was assassinated things only became worse. My wife and her family supported the monarchists, of course, and Penelope followed the rallying cry of the republicans. I was powerless to reconcile them. Soon there were no dinners at all, and then, when the F’rar took re-instituted the monarchy by violence last year Penelope went off to fight them...”
Again he stared off into a painful place.
“Penelope came home once, after the war began. The quarrels were even more furious and embittered than before. And then, while in a fit of madness, rather than let her go back to the fighting, my brother-in-law poisoned his own niece. Penelope died in my arms, screaming in agony. And, her mother soon lost her mind.”
He stared at his paws, and then took another drink. Then he looked up at me.
“I was insane with grief. The monarchy, to my mind, was responsible for the death of my daughter. Even though he was dead, I blamed Augustus for my problems. As I said, I was mad. Augustus had a daughter named Haydn, and I swore that if I ever got the opportunity I would do to her what had been done to my own flesh and blood in his name.”
Wearily, he reached into his tunic pocket and drew out the box I had seen him with the first night I stayed here. He opened it and drew out the delicate needle, half filled with blood, within.
“I obtained this from you after our first dinner. You may remember the pin prick you felt when you sat in my most comfortable chair. As I told you we do many things in the Science Guild. Blood analysis is one of them.” He was barely whispering, staring at the needle.
“You suspected all along,” I said.
“I was sure almost from the beginning.” He put down the box holding the needle and pulled his wine glass to his lips and looked at me blearily. “But I cannot harm you, Haydn. I have gotten over my grief, and you helped me do it. I know now what my daughter was fighting for.”
H
is eyes lost their cloudiness and became hard. “And I must tell you this. Talon escaped my wrath with much scientific knowledge, which he took to the F’rar. Of this I am sure. He is a dangerous and brilliant man, an expert in ballistics and atmospherics, and he took many secrets with him. He is no doubt developing them into weapons for the F’rar as we speak.”
“Was that his picture on the dressing table in your wife’s room?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Almost on cue, the mournful sound of his wife’s moan echoed through the house. Newton grinned, and it was like the grin of a death’s head.
“Do you like the way she sounds?” he said.
The next morning it was as if the previous evening had never occurred. Newton had breakfast with me (I didn’t touch my food) and then accompanied me across the garden to the guild hall. I was put in Merlin’s charge for two hours, and tried to stay awake (I had had a very bad sleep in Penelope’s bed) and listen to her frankly tedious lecture about igneous rocks and basalts and ancient flood plains.
Newton came for me near noon, and I accompanied him to the door leading to the chamber below, which was open again. We passed unmolested into the tunnel, and the door slid shut behind us. Newton had almost returned to his old self, with a touch of ironic smile on his lips.
“You remember your unauthorized peek down here? I thought you might like a closer look.”
I said I would.
At the end of the tunnel the far door was already open, and we passed into the vast chamber.
It was noisy today, and I noticed that the sleek black shape I had seen on my first visit was gone. In its place was a shorter craft, also black, tapered at one end with a hatchway open.
As we approached a head popped out of the hatch and regarded us.
“Ah, Peter, this is...Ransom,” Newton said, making introductions.
Peter reached a paw out, covered in grease. “Pleased to...sorry!”
He wiped the paw on the sleeve of his coveralls and this time I shook it.
He jumped out of the opening and stepped aside. “Care to have a look?”
“Yes.” Since Newton made no move to step forward, I did so and studied the inside of the structure. There were two seats and gaggles of wires held in bundles. In front of the seats, I noticed, was a thin wide window.
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