The God Mars Book Five: Onryo

by Michael Rizzo

  “Feed Line,” Erickson tells me, possibly reading my thoughts. Then we come across the tube of one crossing the floor of the tunnel about mid-point, possibly the same one that runs from White Station to the western tip of the Spine, forming the Boundary between the North and Central Blades. Or a branch of it. If a similar line runs through the southern crest of the Canyon, providing oxygen for that escape route, it could also be the line that the Katar tapped to pressurize the “nursery” the sheltered us in (and refilled our canisters from), though I expect that the Jinn ran the valve lines through the mountain for them. (If that one is as far into the mountain as this one, their colony taps would have to reach a kilometer through solid rock.)

  There is a valve set into the exposed line, and the lack of dust on the manual bleed suggests it was recently used to refresh the oxygen in here, probably by Terina as she passed. Since this underground Tap Site provides water as well as oxygen, I suspect fleeing Katar could shelter here in the mountain for a time, possibly even against another Apocalypse.

  As we’ve stopped for a moment, I take the time to listen, and hear nothing in the tunnel except us. But I think I do see light far up ahead. We keep moving.

  Several hundred meters more and I know what I’m seeing: A stone door much like the one we came through, but this one left levered aside.

  We come out of the mountain up a few hundred meters from the green valley floor. This exit is even better hidden in the rocks than the entrance. Looking over the valley, I recognize the terrain enough to realize our band passed not far down slope from here on their way to Katar. (Would Terina have told us of this shortcut if we were in dire need of getting to Katar sooner, or would she have kept her people’s secret?)

  Visibility in the pervasive haze is poor, making the whole world look dull and ruddy, but I can see just far enough across the valley to make out the eastern tip of the Pax Mountain, about where we camped that night before Yod took us across the Lake. The mountain itself is hidden, but looking north I can see far enough to confirm: The Lake is still invisible. All I see is a scrubby valley, fading into the oppressive haze.

  I find Terina’s tracks easily enough. Whatever she’s dragging leaves its distinctive marks on the rocks and parallel furrows in the gravel and sand. She isn’t trying to hide her path, probably sure of her head start. Is she as sure that no one will dare follow her once she crosses into the Hot Zone? I’d think her father would have certainly tried if we hadn’t taken this task for him, as would his warriors, despite the almost-certain consequences. He may still try, if we don’t return successful and in a timely fashion. (Would Yod act to prevent them before they poisoned themselves to death?)

  While we’re still on the high ground, still above the thick green, I shift my vision to read heat, and try zooming in. I don’t see her. She may have made the boundary already, slipped into Yod’s illusion.

  “We need to move fast,” I state the obvious, and start running recklessly downhill.

  I follow her tracks down slope, and then across the North Blade, about four and a half kilometers to where we encountered the “beach”. I still see traces of our various tracks from that fateful morning, but of course there’s no water, just the scrub-covered belly of Coprates that my internal gauges insist is deadly. Terina’s much fresher footprints and drag-trails lead me to her abandoned sledge. Whatever was on it is gone, but now her tracks are big, heavy, and show the striations of traction soles. They appear to go straight north from here, but the haze has thickened so I can’t see very far. Visibility is maybe only a few hundred meters.

  “Pressure suit,” Erickson confirms, examining her prints. “Possibly a heavy work suit. It will give her some protection from the radiation.”

  “Not enough for what lies between here and there,” Peter tells him dourly. My internal gauges insist that the radiation in that direction is very real.

  I hear footfalls on the gravel, but from the wrong direction. I turn and see the distinctive silhouette of Colonel Ram, approaching us through the haze from the west.

  “Are you expecting we’ll need your help?” I greet him as lightly as I can, given the urgency of the situation.

  “I need to see what’s over there,” he tells us flatly. I can hear rage simmering under his mask.

  “We’re glad for the company, Colonel,” Erickson gives him. I suppose I am, too, as long as his recon doesn’t slow us down.

  The radiation plays hell with my systems as I go, and I’m quickly registering cell damage, toxicity. Erickson and Ram also move with greater discomfort. But Erickson and I are the ones at most risk. Like Chang, Ram’s nanites will rebuild him from almost nothing. As will Peter’s.

  I think I hear Ram talking to someone, but the signal is too corrupted. The dialogue could well be internal, but he sounds like he’s angry at whoever he’s talking to. Determined. Defiant. Demanding. Is he trying to speak to Yod?

  As if in answer, the air all around us starts feeling strangely thick, and hard to move through. Then it becomes heavy, like I’m being squeezed from all sides. I’m remembering feeling like this once before, just as my mask seals my airway and my nanites take over internal recycling. My skin hardens like it did at high altitude, but that’s not what this is. And despite the strange weight on my body, I feel lighter. But it’s not from a reduction in gravity. It’s actually harder to move. Much harder. My movements get slowed, everything slows, even the dust kicking up as we step through it. Is this the radiation, poisoning me, interfering with my Mods?

  There’s a rushing in my ears and the world gets much darker, but the radiation levels drop to normal. It takes me a moment to realize the rushing sound isn’t coming from outside—I can barely hear anything beyond my helmet. My footfalls and the now super-slowed but strangely exaggerated flapping of my armor sections (like I’m running, but I’m barely managing to walk) only make faint hollow sounds. I immediately think of how there’s no sound in vacuum, but this feels like the opposite. I bring my hand up through the resistance and knock on my helmet. I can hear it, but the sound is blunted.

  It’s water, Peter recognizes, amazed. We’re under water.

  I wave my arms through the strange thickness and know he’s right: It’s just like when I fell from the Charon and was pulled down deep into the Lake by the weight of my armor. Only this time, I’m not sinking helplessly down through it. I’m standing on the surface beneath the water. I look up, and see a faint shimmering light where the sun should be.

  My instinct is to drop my armor now, to push myself to the surface and try to swim—Peter knows how to swim—but then I hear Ram clearly in my head:

  “Don’t drop your armor. Use it to keep you on the bottom. Walk. Use your arms to push you forward…” He demonstrates, his robes moving like in a strong wind but in very slow motion, and we emulate his movements, pushing our arms back against the resistance of the water as we push our legs forward, step by step. It’s strange, slow and fatiguing, but it works.

  “Your Mods will start processing oxygen out of the water as you need it,” he explains as we trod on. “Once, I was so depressed that I just let myself sink in a lake like this… I stayed down for days, hiding from the world we’d made, hiding from what life had become. I told myself I wouldn’t come up again until I was ready to do something about it all, no matter what that cost me. Star—Astarte—was waiting for me when I did. She took me to meet Doc, only Doc wasn’t Doc anymore. He’d made himself part of his work.”

  “Yod,” Erickson names in our heads. Ram’s helmet nods (though it bobbles oddly in the water).

  Dust and debris swirl and cloud around us. My gauges tell me I’m getting cold, and Peter says it’s how the water conducts heat faster than air. I remember being so cold when I fell in the Lake, and even after I’d gotten to the shore of the Barrow, my clothes soaked through. But I don’t feel wet now. My armor and under-suit must be sealing it out. Or my skin is refusing to feel it.

  Erickson is the only one of us without a h
elmet. He looks bizarrely uncomfortable, like a man in pain in a strong wind, squinting and grimacing, his long black hair floating every which way around his head. I remember not being able to see clearly the last time I was under, my vision badly blurred. I don’t know if it’s my mask lenses or my modified eyes that are letting me see this strange underwater world now.

  I realize Peter is almost giddy from the experience of walking under water.

  I used to swim, to dive and snorkel, back on Earth.

  I’m not sure what those words mean to him, so he shows me his memories: I’m gracefully moving through water like this, but not a world like this. There are many strange, brightly colored things that I remember from my studies are alive. Fantastic plants sway lazily. Other things—“fish”—glide and dart. It’s indescribably beautiful.

  But this place has none of that, just sand and rock. I think maybe it would have had it someday, if Yod had given the world more time before rewriting it and isolating this little piece, preserved but arrested. And maybe it will have one day, if he wills it, if he makes it so. But I think that would cheapen it, because it wouldn’t be the work of a real God, just a man-made thing gone wrong. Fake creation by a fake deity.

  I also realize we no longer have our trail of tracks to follow. The water swirls the sand as we step and mostly erases our imprints, and it seems to have done the same to Terina’s. Also, we can’t see very far, like being lost in a dust storm, just without the wind. Peter calls the haze in the water “murky.” Compounding it, our positioning systems, our internal compasses, seem to be malfunctioning. And, of course, we can no longer see any of the geographic landmarks. I have to trust our basic sense of direction, anchored by the faint sun shimmering over our heads through the surface of the Lake. But I also know Yod would lead the people of Haven astray if they tried to cross the Lake, disorient them so that they floated in circles for days before winding up back where they started.

  After six interminable hours, the almost-liquid mud that is the ground underneath our feet begins to slowly but steadily rise, the surface above us starts looking closer rather than further away, and there’s more sunlight. In the meantime, my Mods have indeed been processing oxygen out of the water, and, of course, have been keeping me well-hydrated. What I’m lacking is food energy, and I’ve expended a lot of energy getting this far.

  About twenty minutes later, my helmet breaks the surface. The sky overhead is a deep blue, with wisps of white clouds. The sun is low in what I assume is the west, tinting that part of the sky near the horizon shades of purples and oranges. The air is clear, no haze, so I can see we are indeed headed straight for the familiar flat-topped mountain of the Barrow. I feel Peter’s surge of recognition, but also his marvel at what’s different.

  It’s so green now. And so much water…

  “Stage Three Terraforming,” Ram explains, hearing him. “They needed more water, so they snagged a chunk of a passing comet, dragged it here and sent it down in pieces. One benefit of the Modding of the human race was that it made us much better suited for space travel. We could do things safely that we would never dare before. We could handle vacuum, extremes of temperature and acceleration, radiation, zero G, and use far less resources during a flight. We could even retreat into our own internal virtual worlds to stave off the boredom.”

  “Did you ever go out beyond Mars?” Peter asks, becoming the scientist once more.

  “We got as far as the moons of Jupiter and Saturn in my time, before… Well, before everything got reset. Who knows? Some of us may still be out there, building new societies, oblivious to what’s happened here.”

  “Like Haven?” Erickson compares.

  “I never visited Haven,” Ram admits. “But I had a good friend who lived there.” There’s suddenly a profound sadness in his voice.

  We wade through the water to shore. Erickson almost collapses as soon as he’s up on dry sand. I scan for sign of Terina, up and down the beach, and when I see nothing, I attend quickly to pressing need, dragging myself up to the green ringing the base of the mountain and gathering fruits and nuts. I bring fistfuls to Erickson first, then feed myself, dropping my mask. I remember the smell of this place.

  Ram has taken off his helmet and is looking around like he’s suspicious of every plant, rock and grain of sand, like he expects it to attack him. He looks back across the Lake, taking in Yod’s illusion of a larger world that isn’t anymore. And it is a convincing illusion: I have to remind myself that this world only stretches fifteen or twenty klicks in any direction.

  “He really did it,” I hear Ram mutter out loud. He shakes his head in disbelief, then he tells us, “This is just like it was.”

  “I thought you said you never visited Haven?” I question.

  “Haven, no… Once my friend was… Once he died, there was no point.” I can hear his guilt crushing him. But then he gets angry again. He looks at the slope of the Barrow like it’s an enemy. “But I have been here.”

  I offer him something to eat, but he shakes his head in bitter refusal. He steps up to the growth, grabs hold of the plants and drains them. He almost looks like he’s strangling a hated adversary.

  “Haven is about eight klicks that way,” Erickson estimates, gesturing east, “across several klicks of water.”

  Ram may have no interest, but I am curious—I never got to see Haven when I was here, never got to meet the people that Yod deemed worthy of preserving from the other timeline. I suppose that’s what I get for falling off the ship on the way. And I doubt we’ll have time to see it this trip: Even if we find Terina alive and healthy, Asmodeus is still planning something, something devious and cruel and deadly. It’s bad enough that he attacks the Pax and Katar, civilizations that have little defense against him. If he should find a way over here…

  Fed enough to get my gauges back in the green, I start heading east down the beach with purpose, to where I know the Forge hid their ways into the mountain. The others follow.

  About five hundred meters along the shore, we find Terina’s suit. It is indeed a heavy work shell, laden further with extra canisters that could last the better part of a day. The sand looks like she dragged herself up out of the water and stripped out of the suit, abandoning it. My built-in sensors confirm the worst: The suit is hot, hot enough to be deadly.

  “Why aren’t we toxic?” Erickson wonders.

  “We are,” Ram corrects flatly. “Our nanites are scrubbing our tissues and gear. But we’ll need to keep our distance from the Normals for awhile.”

  When I get within a few meters of the abandoned shell, I’m struck hard by strong, foul odors. Ram prods the suit open, and confirms the source: She’d vomited inside her helmet, and soiled herself.

  “First signs of acute radiation poisoning,” Erickson mutters what everyone on this planet is taught in childhood. Part of me hopes that’s all there is, that Yod is counting on gastric distress and perhaps some signature skin burns to dissuade trespassers, and that he didn’t inflict more damage on her. He did let her through, after all. But the suit is definitely hot, and she’s left us a trail across the sand that’s tainted with radiation.

  At least it makes her easy to follow. She’s heading for where the Forge took her and the rest of our party into the mountain, through the ring of green and up into the rocks. I wonder if she’s still hours ahead of us, or if we’ve managed to make up time, catch up to her.

  We find the entrance to the Forge stronghold open, the heavy rocks concealing it moved aside, just as the Forge had left it when Yod offered them a way home. Chang seems to have left it so. (Where’s Chang?)

  There’s a faint trail of radiation up through the rocks to the entrance, tracing her path.

  (Chang healed me. And my father. And Bly and Rashid. Can he heal Terina? She might not need the Companion.)

  Once we duck in through the narrow defensive opening, the tunnels are familiar enough, though strangely melancholy in their abandoned state. Erickson and I lead Ram quickly and
directly to where the Forge excavated the great wall and hatch of the Barrow’s secret facilities. The sight gives Ram pause.

  “This wasn’t buried before,” he tells us. “There were tunnels out through the mountain, big enough for large cargo. Yod must have buried it to keep people out.”

  “Then why let the Forge dig it open again?” I ask what I’m sure I already know the answer to.

  “I’m sure Yod saw it as a ‘benign’ experiment, a controlled way to test our character.”

  “Is that what I was?” Peter hisses. “Is that what my family was? A benign experiment?”

  Ram has no answer for him.

  “What would my world have been like, if Yod hadn’t interfered with our history?” Peter continues to rail.

  “It would have been mine, so I’ve seen it,” Ram confronts.

  And he flashes us a sampling of his memories, as fast as our systems can process. More than the images of that Modded world, I feel the hopelessness, the apathy, the madness. Mankind given everything they could possibly wish for as fast as they could wish for it, and then made invulnerable to the consequences of anything they did. Forever. But it didn’t take forever. It took only years, decades, for the human race to lose its soul and its mind. Asmodeus is only a pale shadow of that world, sane and reserved in comparison.

  The most shocking flash I get is deeply personal to Ram: Kali, his “wife”… he caught her engaging in something called “live guro”, taking sexual satisfaction in the extreme torture and mutilation of the human body, masturbating in gore, her “victims” perfectly willing and eager to participate, just to feel something, to dance with their long-lost mortality…

  I feel sick. I want to vomit. Peter’s reeling worse, horrified, crushed, shaken down to his soul. Erickson looks like he’s staring at a vision of hell. And in the depth of this shared nightmare I manage enough sense and sanity to wonder: Is Ram trying justify what Yod did, by showing us what he undid, by showing us that the alternative was indeed so much worse than all the violence and madness of this world? That the thousands—tens of thousands—of lives taken in this lie are indeed a cheap price to restore our humanity?