by Anthology
“So? Where exactly is it?”
“It’s pretty much on the brink of that chasm,” said Krane. “Where the water of the Ia rushes over the broken canal floor and gushes down into we don’t know what. Into the heart of the planet.”
“On the brink of hell, in other words.”
“Pretty much,” said Krane. “But you’ll have help. Look over to your left. At the noman’s feet.”
Stone saw a large steel-and-slate chest, about a meter square. It had some odd markings stenciled on the side.
“Look inside,” said Krane. So Stone bent and lifted the catches, opening the lid, which eased up on its own. Inside was soft kalebite packing used for delicate scientific instruments. He picked this off carefully. The contents looked unexpectedly sturdy. He reached in both hands and took it out.
“It looks like a big helmet. Like one those old Terran firefighters had.”
Krane said, “It’s a Gollowatt’n battle hat. They once fought the Kolvini through the Martian catacombs and never once saw the light of day.” Quickly, he described the helmet’s intuitive features. “Modified for your use. It’ll let you see in the dark for a start. Heat pictures. And there’s a sensor that tunes to your own eyes so you can use them as supersensitive binoculars. There are extrapowerful lights for when you need to do fine work, such as on the bomb itself. There’s a set of force-tools you can project and use. But it’s a lot more than that. There are a million neurolinks so the helmet works intuitively according to the wearer’s normal responses. We built a detector into it, too, if it survived the journey.”
“Force-tools?”
“They’re modified and mostly intuitive, tuned to your brain so you only have to visualize the problem, not the tool itself. Best make appropriate head movements.”
“OK.” Stone was dubious. “So what’s the magic word?”
“There is none. The helmet was made for a Gollowat’n medic, believe it or not. That’s why it was built with an empathy conceptor, so the medic could work on a wounded soldier or an injured civilian at the scene, usually in a battle situation. Empathy was a Gollowat’n middle name. The greatest doctors on seven worlds. They’re porcine, of course, but close enough to humans for the helmet to work pretty well. It should be compatible with your suit. The noman will make any adjustments you need.”
“It’s no more than a couple of planets at stake.” The helmet was light and felt unexpectedly organic. It shifted like flesh to his touch. It had a faint, pleasant smell, like brine. He lifted it over his head and brought it slowly down, fitting it like a hat. Then it seemed to flow over his skull and snuggle around his throat, his forehead. His suit suddenly buzzed recognition codes. Rounded blinkers fitted over his eyes, but he could see well. If anything, his eyes were sharper. For a moment, his cheekbones itched and he saw an uncomfortable series of cherry-colored flashes. Then a wash of dark red, almost like blood, gave way to enhanced clarity of vision.
The noman extended its arms, touching him gently here and there. His suit settled more comfortably on his body. He was surprised how healthy the thing made him feel. Maybe Gollowat’n medics had to be healthy in order to empathize with their patients. He had a sudden thought.
“This bomb? Is it sentient?”
“Not much,” said Krane.
“So what do I have to do to turn the timer off?”
“You have to open a series of locks. Numbered right to left in what they call G-script. We coded them to a particular melody in a particular time signature. It’s a tune, with each note representing a complex number. Do you know the old Earth tune ‘Dixie’? Just whistle it to yourself. That number should cancel out the existing sequence and effectively baffle the bomb’s key and register. The locks will snap off and it will probably simply go dead in your hand.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Well, it will still be live.”
“And ready to blow.”
“Yes. I’m assured there is very little chance of this going wrong, Mac Stone. Our people worked it out. Essentially, all you have to do is memorize that simple little tune. Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton—”
“There is a problem.” Stone was almost embarrassed.
“What’s that?”
He flushed. “I’m tone-deaf,” he said.
4
Dancing in the Dark
“Then try to remember the intervals.” Krane seemed bitterly amused, like a man who believes he’s thought of everything only to be told of one obvious unconsidered fact. “The helmet should help you. We’ve entered the code and the helmet should translate it automatically.”
Stone shrugged. “And if I succeed, I come back here and you give me the sapphires?”
“The whole bag. I promise.”
Stone didn’t have much choice now. He had to make a decision. Believe this strange Earthman or not? He laughed his long, low purr and tested the helmet’s responses. He pulled the casque down a little more firmly, settling the bond with his suit. Somehow he knew what to do next. He blinked to make the lights come on. Then he lay down on the side of the pit, fishing up his gun. The wanal made an unpleasant noise but went on eating.
Stone wiped slime off the barrel of his Banning and shoved it back in its holster. “What now?”
“The helmet’s programmed to help you find the bomb. If you leave this chamber, you’ll be at the top of a flight of stairs leading to a wide walkway. It runs beside the canal. All the Sheev waterways were made like that and their successors copied them.” There was a warm, Terran voice speaking to him now. Was this what Miguel Krane really sounded like? “There’s a numbering system still based on Sheev. The Sheev system used predominantly eleven. One, two, eleven, eleven, twenty-two, and so on.
“The Ia was rediscovered by the last Martians. They followed us. They built cities where they could shelter from the meteors. Air enough and water. They cultivated plants that grew well in the hydroponic fields. They built the atmosphere factories. They traded up and down that stretch of the canal. They sustained their particular civilization for another thousand years or more. When the meteor storms had passed, as you know, the whole planet had been pulverized. Almost all trace of Martian life was wiped out, except for things that lived belowground. They never really came back to the surface.”
Mac wondered what his own chances were. As he found the wide black steps that led downward, he thought of those ancient Martians who had built them back when the planet was still a world of gentle seas and green hills, of endless forests and big skies, before humans had evolved at all. And then came the Five Ages. The ages of the humanoid Martians. And then the meteors. The Martians would ultimately grow lonely as the remaining scraps of their culture were buried by the rusty Martian sands. They elected to find solitude below the surface and fade into death surrounded by the massive black stones of their eerie necropolis.
For all he was a loner, Stone found it hard to understand their mind-set. From the moment he burst out of his mother’s womb, he’d had to fight to remain alive and had relished every second he won for himself, grateful for whatever air he could drag into his gasping lungs, for every sight and sound that told him that he still lived. Mac Stone had a human brain and he was proud of his Martian heritage. He didn’t care whose lives he was saving or what reward he would receive. Mars was all he cared about. His battered flitboots echoed down wide steps of black pearl marble, as smooth and as stately and as beautiful in their subtle curvature as they had been on the day they were finished. He hardly noticed their grandeur. He thought of the big reflective tanks he had played among as a little boy and what so much water could do for the Low-Canal.
He breathed vanilla air, which reminded him of the shows he’d watched as a kid on the big public V-drome screens, sometimes as real as life, sometimes better, and he wondered if this was like that. Was this his life starting to replay at faster-than-real speed as his brain got ready to die? Was he already dead, remembering the high moments, the fine moments, of his w
ild life before he’d been sold? When he and Yily Chen would scamper like scorpions in and out of the blackness cast by the vast tanks and at night chase the flickering shadows cast by Phobos as she came sailing from the west, shreds of darkness skipping before her like familiars, spreading a trail of shades behind her . . . Oh, that raw intemperate beauty! Alive or dead, Mac swore he was never again going to leave Mars.
The noman had thoroughly repaired and recharged his day suit. Mac felt pleasantly warm as he reached the bottom of the stairs and stood on the edge of the great canal and looked out over it. He was stunned by the amount of water the planet was keeping secret! It could have been an ocean, with no far shore visible. To his left and right, the canal was endless. From what he could tell, much of it followed an old watercourse, but other parts were hollowed out by something that had sliced easily through the dark Martian granite and decorated it with deep, precise reliefs showing half-human creatures and unlikely beasts. Machinery of alien design and mysterious purpose. There were walkways cut into the canal walls, allowing animals or machines to drag boats beside them. Characters etched into the granite counted off glems, close to a meter, in what Stone knew as “Dawson,” named for the script’s first Terran translator.
He moved his head to his right. In the helmet’s crisp illumination, he saw black water rippling, making its rapid way toward the falls, which had to be miles away and yet were already distinct. A distant roar. At a discreet sound from the helmet, Stone turned right, keeping the water on his left as the walkway widened, revealing the dark bulk of buildings, low houses, all abandoned. This had been a busy, thriving port. People had traded down here and been entertained, had families and lived complex lives. Mac wished that he had time to explore the town. Unlike the canal itself, the settlements along the bank were on a human scale and in different styles. This was where the last humanoid Martians had lived. The place had a bleak atmosphere. Mac saw no evidence for the legends he’d grown up hearing in the Low-Canal of enduring pockets of Martians still living down here.
They were not the last native Martians. Those were the raïfs. Never wholly visible, they flitted around the Low-Canal settlements—the so-called mourning Martians, whose songs sometimes drifted in from the depths of the dead sea-bottoms and whose pink-veined outlines were almost invisible by noon. They drifted like translucent rays, feeding on light. Their songs could be heartbreaking. Storytellers insisted that they were not a new race at all but the spirits of the last humanoid Martians, forever doomed to haunt the Low-Canal.
Stone had never felt quite so alone. The buildings were thinning out as he walked, and his helmet showed him an increasing number of great natural arches, of stalagmites and stalactites forming a massive stone forest beside the whispering waters of the Ia canal. Some had been carved by ancient artists into representations of long-since-extinct creatures. Every so often, he was startled by a triangular face with eldritch, almost Terran, features. Mac, used to so much strangeness, felt almost in awe of those petrified faces, which stared back at him with sardonic intelligence.
Nothing lived here, not even the savage crocs. Nothing flew or scampered or wriggled over the smooth marble, among the stone trunks of stone trees whose stone boughs bent back to the ground. The only noise came from the rushing water, and even that was muted.
He thought he heard a faint rustle from within the stone forest. He paused, and heard it again. A sound. Nothing more. He couldn’t identify it. But he did know that he probably shouldn’t be hearing that sound. Maybe some remnants of a civilization did still live down here after all?
He moved his jaw, his ears. As Krane had promised, the helmet responded intuitively and amplified some of the outside sounds while filters dampened others. All he heard was the steady flow of the canal waters. Had he imagined something? When it came again, he knew what it was. A biped in shoes was following him. Or keeping pace with him, out there in the endless caves. Louder. There it was. A light, steady footfall in step with his own. When he stopped, it stopped. It came from the seemingly endless stone archways on his right. His laugh was almost demonic. He reached to loosen his Banning in its holster and bent to feel for his knife, still in place. He recalled boyhood tales of fierce monsters down here, of horribly disfigured mutants who lived off human flesh. Until now, he’d believed none of them.
Another step. Stone blinked to turn off the helmet’s lights. He crept as silently as he could into the nearest stone arch. The faintest scuttling sound came next. Carefully, he drew his blaster, dialing a swift instruction with his thumb. When he leveled the gun, it shot out a group of tiny light bursts, like so many brief, brilliant stars slowly arcing through that natural crypt, throwing a shadow against the curving stone pillars. A human. He was being followed. Somebody sent by Krane? Unlikely. The lep? Certainly not that noman. One of Varnal’s ancient enemies? He now had a charge and three-quarters left in his Banning. Logically, there was only likely to be one other person in the catacombs—whoever had chased him down here in the first place. They would be very well armed!
He snarled into the blackness. “Listen, I don’t know what you expect to get from me. If it’s sapphires, not only do I not have them, I don’t know where they are. And if you have any idea that I’m lying, I ought also to tell you that I’m on a mission. If I’m stopped, Mars will be blown to bits, and you with her. Now, I don’t much care for what they’ve done to Mars, but I was born on this planet, and I’d like to spend a few more years here. So whatever you’re after, Mister, maybe you should back off. Or show yourself. Or just come into the open and fight. I’ll take whatever option you like.”
No answer came out of that cold blackness, just the echo of the water whispering on its way to oblivion.
Keep moving.
Crunch!
A stunshell went off where he had been moments earlier. Only an amateur would have missed him. A suspicion became a thought in Stone’s mind.
It had to be the same hunter who had been trailing him since RamRam City. He should know who it was by now. If it was a bluff, he’d been bluffed by a pro. Yes, there was no doubt. Someone was playing a game, maybe searching for his weaknesses.
With that, Stone snapped the helmet lights back on. There it was! A human shape fluttering among the stalagmites. He switched the light off, listening. Then, very quietly, he left the wide path. He passed among those great natural arches, seeking whoever hunted him. By the way they darted through the darkness, he couldn’t help wondering how long they had lived on Mars. He recognized that same characteristic movement. A habit of approaching everywhere from the side or from behind. A habit of caution. The anticipation of attack. So this wasn’t some Terran bounty hunter after his hide. This was a Martian.
Stone knew all the Martians likely to be offered the job and this wasn’t their style, no matter how high a reward he had on his head. Except—
Again, he brought his lights into play, and this time he got more than a glimpse. A red-and-black night suit. Carrying extra air. Two Banning 22-40s. Every bounty hunter had a signature.
Could it be Yily Chen? Or someone working with Chen?
Crunch!
Now he knew that they didn’t really want him dead. It had to be Chen. They had just been pretending up there before the croc got him. They had wanted him to think he was as good as dead. Or maybe they’d wanted to get him down here where they could take their time with him?
“If that’s you, Yily, why are you after me? You’re on Terra. I’m on Mars. We were never at odds.”
Her voice hadn’t changed as much as he’d expected. A sweet, light, lilting brogue came back out of the darkness. “Maybe the price was never high enough, Mac.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“OK. Then you tell me why somebody wants you alive and doesn’t want me to talk it over with you.”
“You wouldn’t torture me. I know it. Not me.”
“Maybe. Circumstances change, Mac. Times change.”
“Very true. But you don’t
. I don’t. We’re Martians. You’re more Martian than I am. You don’t have anyone they can get at you through. Same with me. We have identical reasons for keeping free of ties.”
“We’re different, Mac. Fundamentally. I’m a hunter. You’re a thief. Sometimes hunters are commissioned to find thieves.”
“So who gave you the job? Who wants you to bring me in?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“Delph. And he has most of the money in the universe. But not enough to pay for me.”
“Maybe so much money that I got curious. I wanted to know what he wanted that is worth such a lot. A bag I’m not supposed to look in. And which you don’t have. I know you don’t or you’d have used it as a decoy by now. I’ve hunted you for nearly a week, Mac. I’ve almost killed you half a dozen times. I’ve given you a chance to try all the angles. And you’ve tried them.”
“What? You were testing me?”
“I guess.”
She stepped out into the open, into the beam of light, a quick, boyish figure. Not at all what he’d imagined. She held her helmet in her left hand, one of her guns loose in the other. Her brown curly hair framed an impossibly beautiful triangular face with heavily slanted golden eyes. Her brows were thin and sloping, her lips red and bright as fresh blood. Few of those she hunted ever saw that face. Her clients rarely saw Yily Chen at all. She just delivered her “commissions,” like packages. She’d been his sister. He’d played with her every day as a young child. For all he remembered her as smart and pretty, Mac could hardly believe how truly beautiful she had become.
“Hello, Yily. What are you really after?” He lifted his visor.
“Hi, Mac.” She smiled and holstered her pistol. “You’re a hard guy to fool. And hard not to kill, too. I guess I wanted to know what Delph needs so bad from you that he’d let me name my price.”
Now he had a good idea what this was all about. He holstered his own Banning. She slipped her gun into its sheath and went back to drag something from the shadows. A bulky pack. She knelt to check the harness.