Lin Carter - The Man Who Loved Mars
Page 16
What is it that you are trying to say?
“That there is, by reason and logic and true justice, nothing that sets a man apart from another. There is truly no difference between two men, so far as justice can discern. What is it, then, upon which you can fairly and honestly decide this man belongs to Earth and this man to Mars?”
Speak���if you have the answer …
Urgency lent my tongue an unaccustomed eloquence.
“I say the only difference between an Earthman and a Martian lies within his heart. For it is therein that he himself selects his own allegiance! An Earthman is one who has chosen the Earth above all worlds; and, conversely, a Martian is one who foreswears all other worlds but Mars!”
They nodded thoughtfully, wise, deep eyes bent upon me. I rushed on, the words tumbling out in desperation.
“Hear me and judge! It is not just for myself that I plead. What of the Colonists themselves? I do not speak of the enslavers, the plunderers, the exploiters, the police, or the government-���but the people of the Colonies. The simple men, the little men, who have left Earth behind forever, to make Mars their home. Here they have built their homes; here their children have been born; and here���on Mars���they desire to live and die and be buried. By the test that I have just described, are they not as truly men of Mars as are those who stand before you���Kraa, Huw, Kuruk, and Chaka? And what of myself���am I not truly a Martian, in all ways that really matter? Have I not foresworn my own people and their ways to join my heart to the People? It is only an accident of birth that makes me native to another world���but I am more truly Martian than many who were lucky enough to have been born one ���for I chose Mars.”
I folded my arms.
“Now���judge me!” I said into the silence.
The way back proved much easier and swifter than the descent had been, for the Timeless Ones whisked us to the surface in a twinkling through another of their many magics.
The Moon Dragon warriors were delighted and relieved to see us again, whole and safe. They were filled with marvels to relate, and among them the miraculous disintegration of the two F’yagha spacecraft was the least remarkable. Faces agleam with excitement, they told how all the long night through, the darkness had been cloven with the fiery trails of the F’yagha ships, drifting up one by one into the skies atop tails of scintillant flame and thunder.
” ‘Tis as if all of the Hated Ones in the world are���are going home!” the chieftain we had left in charge of the warriors swore. We told him that was exactly what was happening.
Dawn broke in the east���the swift, sudden blossoming of light that is morning on Mars. The long Night of Gods was over; a new day had dawned at last.
As for the Timeless Ones, they had returned to their dreams again���but only for a little, they told us. Soon-���in a few years or a decade or a century or two���they would awake again and speak to the Princes of the People. Then would they unseal the Den of Miracles and instruct the savants in the use of those instruments and devices whereof a free planet might have need.
We were not really sorry to see the Three return again to the slumbers from which we had roused them in untimely fashion. It is hard enough to begin the task of rebuilding a world-���without having the gods peering over your shoulder every moment!
At the gates of Lost Ilionis we made our last farewells. A party of warriors would ride with Dr. Keresny all the long way back to where the d’Eauville lay hidden in the Thermodon.
As for Konstantin Bolgov, he would trouble us no more; other guards would ride north to deliver him to Laestrygonum, and from there he could ship out for Earth again. Keresny would find the flight home lengthy and boring, but the computer would do the navigating and piloting for him, and at least, this time, he would not have to worry about being intercepted by a Mandate patrol.
For the patrols were going home too!
The Timeless Ones had decreed that a vast area about Mars was to be closed to all Earth shipping of any kind; only the Jamad himself could terminate this decree, when the time came and he felt that Mars had nothing more to fear from her former oppressors.
If the Doctor was depressed that he had not been permitted by the Timeless Ones to bear any of the treasure of Ilionis back to Earth, he was tactful enough���or realistic enough���to pretend otherwise.
But I think he had found enough to content him. His eyes sparkled with enthusiasm, and he was bubbling over with excitement as we made our last farewells.
“Ah, Ivo, my boy, what a book I shall write when I get back home! Think of it, a lost chapter of human history, rediscovered again … The implications to myth, to cosmology, to archaeology, to extraterrestrial historical studies, are immense and fabulous! There will be expeditions launched into the Asteroid Zone because of me. God knows what they will find there … Artifacts? records? Perhaps even the ruins of the lost civilization of the Timeless Ones!”
He rubbed his hands together briskly at the thought.
“Oh, Grandfather, I hope there’ll be no trouble with the political police,” Ilsa said wistfully. “You have broken laws, you know, getting Ivo here. Do you think there will be, well���reprisals?”
He shook his head in a firm negative.
“Nonsense, my dear! Not a chance of it! Why, if anything, they’ll be indebted to me back home on Earth. They must be mighty upset, and thoroughly mystified, as the Martian occupational forces come flying back in toto, unable to explain what came over them. And they will be somewhat more than just mystified when they send patrols back to find out what happened���and run into that ‘zone of no passage’ the Timeless Ones have created to go up around Mars, once the last Earth ship has left the vicinity! No, my dear, there’ll be no trouble, I’m quite certain of it. Oh, perhaps I did bend a few regulations a little, but I committed no serious crime. And I will be in an excellent position to demand that all charges against me be dropped. For, after all, I will be the only person on Earth who was down there when it all happened, and the only one who knows the full story of the Timeless Ones and their decree as to the freedom of Mars.”
His eyes sparkled with excitement.
“Ah, what a book there is to be written! I’ll tell the whole story of our expedition in Ilionis and our descent into Yhoom. And after that one there will be other books to write���so many books and so much work to be done! Why, we will have to rewrite the whole history of Mars, as we have it now! And we will perhaps be able to reconstruct the forgotten chronicles of the Ancients by interpreting the old myths and sagas, now that we know they have a genuine basis in truth! Ah … there is so much to do; I am anxious to get started with it!”
He beamed on her fondly and a little sadly.
“You are quite certain, my dear, that you will not change your mind? And that you have made the right decision? Keep in mind, my dear, that you will never be able to go back once the zone has gone up …”
Ilsa smiled and nodded.
“Quite certain, Grandfather!”
Her cheeks were flushed; her eyes sparkled. Yellow locks fluttered around her face like an aureole. Her lingers were warm in mine as we stood hand in hand.
“I will stay here with Ivo,” she said. “I too choose Mars!”
He must have seen the tenderness in my face, for he smiled and said slyly: “Perhaps, my dear, Mars has chosen���you! But no matter, no matter. I quite understand���or at least, I think I do. You will have your work cut out for you, both of you, in the years ahead. You need each other now, but you will need each other even more in the hard, long years to come.”
I nodded, shaking his hand again.
“Yes, it will be a difficult thing, welding the Nine Nations together into one, healing old breaches, old enmities, and making strangers into friends. But it is a job worth doing, and we shall do the best we can. Perhaps our son, or our son’s son, will live in a world united and free and at peace with itsel
f. That is a dream worth striving for, don’t you think?”
“I do indeed; God speed you in the achieving of it! But now I must go. Ilsa … Ivo … there are no words, no words at all. Except the old ones: bless you, my children … Till we meet again.”
He got into the saddle, waved once, and was gone with the warriors of the Moon Dragon riding at his side.
Prince Kraa stared after him, politely baffled.
“An, I do not understand that man, the Dok-i-tar!” he complained.
“What don’t you understand, my friend?”
“Him! I thought he came for treasure���he says he came for wisdom! And now he departs with nothing at all���and even leaves a woman behind!” The old Prince shook his head in bafflement.
“Never will I understand the ways of the F’yagha … But now, at last, we are done with them and their strange customs forever���thanks be to the Timeless Ones!”
And so we rode back down the great Avenue of Monoliths to the edge of the Sacred Land, and in time we came again to the gates of Farad.
Had it really been only seven days since we rode out of Farad, bound for the Lost City and the age-old mystery of the Timeless Ones? So much had happened in that little span of time that it was difficult to realize just how short a time it had been.
For in those seven days the future of two worlds had changed forever. An ancient mystery had been solved that had baffled men for ages. A mighty war had been won, and its victory accomplished without the taking of a single life.
I sat in the high saddle and looked up at the mighty
gates of old Farad, where they stood framed between the twin pylons of glistening black marble … at the blackly purple sky that stretched above it, powdered with the crystal fire of wintry stars, and the pale, dim orb of the distant sun beyond …
Somewhere in that dark vault, faint and difficult to see, the twin moons of old Mars hurtled by in their flight, as they had flown since time itself began.
Mars was mine now, mine and my sons, forever.
Whatever surprises the years ahead held for me, something of me would always be here.
Seven days … and in that time, so much had changed, so much had ended. So much had begun …
Her fingers were warm in mine, and that warmth would be near me always. To have found a woman to love … this too was one of the miracles those seven days had brought to pass.
Nor was it the least of them!
The gates swung wide before me. And I rode at last into my kingdom.