by Sean Wallace
Asneath screamed with him. For his hands and arms had vanished, or so she thought, until she knelt and felt them. They were still there. They had gone black, not the color, but in absence of light. As the statue neared, the form of the child was changing to that of his god. She picked him up. He felt lighter than before, his living weight draining from him. They ran to the altar and Baoqian stood before them, between the all-guarding arms of Olan.
The outraged bats screeched in the dome. Baoqian wielded his axe, soul singing. A blue dragon spread wings above him; a blue aurochs charged through him. The dead fell before him.
Dada jumped down to the ground and ran over to them. The dead ignored him. He turned cheerfully on them. “Can I lend you a hand?” he said, tearing off an arm. “Mind your head,” caving in a skull. He tore a path through to the living.
Then the roof was swept away as a child sweeps his toys aside. The living crouched, hands over their heads in useless protection as boulders the size of horses rained around them. But the arms of Olan are a strong shield and no stones struck them. Then the statue looked in. The face was too far above to make out, in shadow, remote and dim, yet awe and dread froze them.
“Watch your step!” Dada said, catlike recovering his footing first, and bringing his boot down hard, on a femur. It cracked with a dry crunch.
Then the dead drew back, with a dry murmur, bowing in reverence to their lord. The dance was over.
A vast hand reached in through the roof, of black obsidian. It groped with the plump uncoordinated fingers of infancy. The child in Asneath’s hold screamed as flesh swept from him. He shone darkly with utter absence of light, and he lifted in Asneath’s arms. Or rather the living world seemed to bend around him, bend in to him, to oblivion.
“Mama! Mama!” he screamed.
A voice sighed with him, filled with the same feeling, a voice bigger than the world. “Mama, mama,” the statue sighed, through the æons.
“No!” Asneath cried, as Qushi rose towards the reaching obsidian hand. Or it rose to him or . . . Perspective altered in ways she could not comprehend. She clung to the dead child. She lifted with him, or the world left them behind. Dada seized her waist as she rose, and tried to hold them down.
The giant head lowered enough for them to see the face, a face larger than the city. But there was no face. There was only a frightful whirl, a vortex of power sucking life into that other place, that lonely land of Dying that lies so close to ours, marching hill to hill, dale to dale, heart to heart, skull to skull, and yet is so distant and so terrible.
“Todesfall! Lord!” Dada exclaimed in reverence, tears pouring down his cheeks. He sank to his knees, forgetting to hold Asneath.
Only Baoqian stood between them and it—Baoqian, the arms of Olan. Baoqian roared in rage and hopeless defiance. He screamed Olan’s name and gave an impossible leap. A blue dragon reared over him, a blue aurochs leaped through him, but he was a flea to the colossus that bestrode them. He swung his axe in a great arc. It was not a human movement, it was divine. It was a prayer. The blade shattered when it hit the obsidian. Then the hand swept him aside. He was crushed against the left arm of Olan, and slid dead and broken to the ground.
The hand seized Asneath and Qushi. Then the statue stood. They swung high, impossibly high above the world, and all the time Qushi squirmed in Asneath’s arms and changed. Asneath clung to him, her face buried against his shoulder, hoping to shield him with flesh still human. But he was oozing from her arms and floating, and shining now, shining with blackness, drawing the world into him. “I must pray,” she thought, but all she could think of was Baoqian. He was dead and she had never thanked him. The hand came to a halt. She knew they must stand high, high above the world, before the face. She dared not look. The cold breath from Dying flooded over her. “Frir! Frir!” she cried, as her last desperate grip failed. “Save us! Save him!”
And the gods answered her prayer. A voice too large to hear thundered in her ears, like the sea and sky a thousand times magnified. She was sure it spoke one slow, sure, remorseless word. “Hold.”
The child in her arms grew heavy again, and ceased moving. She raised her head. She saw Qushi had taken on flesh once more, with normal pink skin. But his eyes were closed, he was limp in her hold and he was not breathing. Below the world was hidden beneath silver mist that curved to the horizon. Around them was cold darkness with the empty moon like a dead lamp lighting a cold black room.
She saw at once they had made a mistake. The statue of Todesfall had not become larger. It had stayed the same size it ever was. It was the world that had become small. Perspective had slipped, but now she saw the true state of things. For Olan restored everything. Olan towered over them, over the rim of the world. He was so large that half of him was hidden beneath the horizon. She could see only the upper part of his chest, heavily tattooed, and far above the shaved dome of his head gleamed above a face, stern and blurred. He was as large again to the statue as even the fondest father towers over his new born babe. And Olan was not fond. Olan’s arms were folded. “Hold,” one word, still rang in her ears, the echoes reverberating to a close.
For the right prayer had come to the right souls, at the right time and place, when Baoqian died fighting without hope, his battle ax shattered in his hand, when Asneath called on Frir instead of despair.
One glimpse. One word. Todesfall had to obey. That was all.
Perspective slipped with a sickening swoop and the world swam to its right size again. The statue was the size of a baby so there was no fall at all. Asneath knelt on the cold stones of Olan’s temple with Qushi still in her arms. Dada stared at her, astonished. “Can it be? Have you won?” he asked.
“Child!” a woman called.
Asneath saw it was dawn for there was a golden light shining through the temple doors. There was a woman standing in the light, blinding, radiant. Asneath raised her hand to shield her eyes. She saw a poor woman, in rags. Her reaching hands were red and chapped with toil. She had a sharp, pointed chin and nose, that told a shrew. But her eyes were filled with all the love and laughter in the world.
“Mama!” Qushi squealed. He ran towards her, arms wide.
Then mother and child were gone. The light was gone. The body in Asneath’s arms lay still, so still. Yet Asneath could not let him go, even though she knew his soul had gone on to where he so longed to go, back to his mother and better luck in his next life. But that did not help her in this one. She knelt over him and wept, wept for the living and the dead. After a long while, she became aware that Dada was kneeling next to her, that his blameless, murderous eyes were fixed on her.
She hiccuped out incoherent words, that she hoped he would not kill her.
“We are deeply in your debt,” he hastened to assure her. “Look. You have returned our statue.” He picked up the baby-sized statue and brought it to her to show her, cradling its heavy weight in his arms with care. But he shielded its face from her sight, so she never saw it.
“Hide it better this time, so the lawful priests will not find it,” she managed.
“I don’t think they will try that trick again,” he said, cheerfully.
“I thought it was dawn,” she sobbed, remembering. She wiped her tears and looked up through the shattered roof. She saw that the Frir-light had deceived her. It was deep night still. The moon was high, but she saw with joy that reassuring shadow was splashed across its face.
“Look,” she said, swallowing her sobs. “Rimbaud has returned to her roost.”
So they knew the world had come perilously close to the Great Ending whose coming has many times been foretold yet has always held off somehow, but now the danger was past, and reassurance shone in the moon’s shadowed face. Asneath climbed to her feet, decided to lay the dead boy down beside Baoqian. She turned to see an astonishing sight.
A dozen confused fruit bats had flown around the dome while the battle raged and great events shook their tiny, uncomprehending animal world. Now as silence fel
l they grew bold. They flew down into the hall of the temple and they circled above the crushed figure of a man. The sight filled them with strong, strange elation, feeling foreign to them. A feeling neither beast nor human but divine.
One by one, they flew to the pillar and crawled down, until the bravest of them brushed the dead man’s face with his soft whiskers. The touch was too much for him and he drew back with a squeak of fear. They formed a strange illusion as they huddled there, a strange shadow on the pillar, like an old woman in a cloak. And stranger still, as the echo of the squeak died, the old woman shook her cloak and stepped from the stone.
The crone looked at Asneath, and Asneath fell to her knees before the power of her bright eyes. She turned to Dada. “Blind old bat, am I?” she laughed, mockingly. He dared not meet her gaze.
She bent and touched the dead man beside her, and his crushed flesh healed. Asneath felt hope so great seize her that she thought she would choke. “Baoqian,” the crone called, in a hoarse rasp. But he did not wake.
Asneath’s wild hopes sank.
“No time to lie about, lazy bones,” the crone scolded, and kicked Baoqian smartly in the ribs.
This time he woke, with a surprised grunt. He sat up and rubbed his face.
The shape of the crone collapsed back into bats, who flew in all directions with startled shrieks. But her voice rang out, strong and mocking as life itself. “You’ve traipsing enough to do yet before you earn your rest. Get up, get up, and live,” Rimbaud said.
So he did.
Cephalogon
Alys Sterling
“What is this?” Will poked his chopsticks at a tentacle slowly writhing its way out of the mound of rice-shaped algal starch in front of him.
“Think of it as a Martian delicacy.” Maura grimaced at her own plate.
“Just so long as I don’t have to think of it as dinner.” Will waved his arm, indicating the dining hall around them, its three long yellow-topped tables occupied by scientists of various persuasions. “My kingdom for a steak.”
“It’s supposed to be a horse,” Maura said.
“I’d rather eat a horse than this.” Will teased the tentacle out a little further. The suckers showed bright red against the orange flesh.
“If this is anyone’s kingdom, it’s mine.” Pete picked up a slimy lump of his own dinner and shoved it into his mouth without looking at it.
“My coring rig then.”
“No way,” Pete said, still chewing. “That’s company property.”
“A whole horse would feed all of—”
A series of loud thuds rattled the plates on the tables and drowned out Will’s last words.
“Do they have to do that while we’re eating?” Maura shouted, as the noise of the bombing run died away.
“Of course. You know there just aren’t enough hours in the day to test weapons.” Will held up the tentacle, now captured between his chopsticks. “Personally, I’m more worried about things like this. I don’t mind eating seafood, but this isn’t even a real squid. Vern is serving up mutants again.”
“It’s all the bombs,” Pete nodded. “There’s radiation or something else they’re not telling us about. That’s why we’re getting so many mutations.”
Maura shook her head. “Nah. It’s all that crap the last team kept putting on the fields to try to get crops to grow. Those chemicals just went straight into the lake.”
“And they still never got anything to grow,” Will said. “Some of the stuff they used, I’m surprised the rocks aren’t sprouting tentacles.”
“We need to get the proper bacteria in situ.” Maura gestured with her chopsticks, as though jabbing bacteria into the Martian soil with them. She never seemed to lose enthusiasm, no matter how many of her experiments failed. Even her hair bristled with it, short blond curls shooting out energetically from her head. She looked like an avenging angel in a white lab coat.
“Chemicals aren’t the answer.”
“I don’t notice anything growing in your plots yet,” Pete said.
“The soil is toxic. I just need to breed a strain that can—”
Another round of bombing cut off Maura’s reply. The mess hall windows shook in their insulated frames.
“That was a little close,” said Pete.
Before anyone had time to answer, another run commenced. The floor rippled. Will’s chair rocked, then tipped backwards as the lights flickered and went out. His shoulders hit the metal ridge of the chair-back, and then his head hit the floor.
He woke in darkness, feeling something sticky on his cheek. A cold, writhing worm was forcing its way into his nose. He tried to breathe, and choked on rising nausea.
Beams of light cut the blackness; someone had found the emergency torches.
“Helb!” Will shouted. “I’b udder addag.”
“Silly.” Maura knelt over him.
Will felt her fingers on his cheek. Her nails scraped his skin as she pried at the thing stuck there. It came away in increments, trying to hang on.
“It was only your dinner.” Maura dangled the red-suckered tentacle in front of him.
“No way am I eating that now,” Will said. “You can have it for a specimen if you want.”
Maura sighed. “If I analyzed all the mutants Vern catches, we’d get nothing to eat. Besides, my field is microbiology. Compared to what I normally look at, this thing came from a giant.”
“Hey, when you two are finished discussing the food, there’s something you might want to come see.” Pete beckoned from the door.
Will let Maura help him up. He walked over to the door, gingerly running his fingertips over the back of his head. By the feel of it, he had quite a lump. Then he reached the open door and stood shivering in the chill night air, lump forgotten.
Between the mess hall and the lab huts, a thirty-centimeter-high escarpment now broke the once-flat ground. Looking from side to side, as Pete swung the beam of his torch, Will saw the irregularity continuing into the distance towards the lake, and on in the other direction through the rest of the Lewin Agri-Industries compound.
“That last one was no bomb test,” Pete said softly.
“Bloody hell,” Maura whispered. “Marsquake.”
“Idiots!” Will shouted, as though he could make the managers of Conglomerated Armories hear him across the lake. “Fools. Military-minded assholes. I told them months ago there was a fault zone here, and what do they do? Bomb the shit out of it, that’s what.”
The damage looked worse in the morning. Cracks ran across the dining hall windows. One of the oldest buildings on Mars, constructed eighty years ago by a team of terraformers, had collapsed. The Quonset hut, which housed Will’s equipment, was still in one piece, but a quick look inside before breakfast revealed the equipment itself had not fared so well. Toppled shelves and broken core samples littered the floor.
Everything would be cross-contaminated now. Will groaned. Weeks of drilling wasted.
He stomped off to the mess hall hoping to find Maura, but she wasn’t there. He spooned up algal porridge at several times his usual speed, his mind filled with visions of twisted metal. He had to get out and inspect his drilling rig. It would take months to get a replacement up here. Not to mention an extension on his grant. As he gulped down the last slimy mouthful, Pete came in followed by a man with a Conglomerated Armories badge on his jacket.
“Will, a word with you.” Pete beckoned him out of the mess hall, leading the way across the broken ground outside to his office. “This is Andrew Short, from Conglomerated Armories. Will is our geologist.” He waved Short through the door ahead of him. “He may be able to explain what’s happened.”
“What’s happened,” Will said to Short, “is that your bloody bombs have gone and caused a Marsquake, that’s what. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Short looked taken aback. “We have yet to determine the cause of the quake. The planet may still exhibit some post-terraforming instability. Besides, it’s by no means
certain that our test site was the epicenter.”
“Very good, Short.” Will applauded soundlessly. “Look out there.” He pointed back out the door, at the miniature escarpment bisecting the compound. “That says we’re awfully close right here.”
“In any case,” Short continued after a moment, “we have a more serious problem. The lake is disappearing.”
“What? You—”
“I’d like you to go have a look,” Pete interrupted, before Will could decide what to call Short.
Personally, Will wouldn’t mind if Lake Edgar disappeared off the face of Mars. At least then Vern would have to stop serving mutant squid. But Pete hadn’t exactly given him any choice about going.
Short drove Will out to the lake in his Mars buggy, an ATV equipped with huge cleated tires and a state-of-the-art locater system. If not for the satellite location, Will might have believed they had reached the shore of the wrong lake. Slimy patches of algae, now dying in the chill sunlight, marked the old waterline. The ancient lake-bed, refilled fifty years ago by the terraformers, lay once again bare and exposed for a good kilometer before water came into view.
Short maneuvered the buggy forward. Will felt the wheels slip, breaking through the dried crust of the algae patches and sliding on the slime beneath. He put a hand out to brace himself as they rolled down a steep incline. The vehicle bounced down a final step in the ground, and Will hit his head on the roof. It was the last straw.
“Why do you have to drop so many bombs on Mars, anyway?” Will burst out, no longer able to contain his frustration. “Isn’t it enough you made the moon so radioactive no one can land on it? We’ve barely made Mars habitable, and now you’re destroying it, too.”
“Habitable? You know better than I do how many scientists have tried and failed to make crops grow here. Without a source of food, Mars can’t support large settlements. We might as well get some use out of the planet. After all, we can’t test these things on Earth.”
“Why not? Where do you intend to use them, if not Earth?”