Sebastian of Mars

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Thank you!” I said, and reached up to put my paws around his neck.

  He patted my back and then straightened. “You are getting too old for such displays of affection, Sebastian! Before you know it, your body will change in ways that are remarkable. Soon, you will not be a kit anymore. Now, a short lesson. Point the instrument straight overhead, so that it projects on the ceiling. And tell me which is the brightest star and what its name is.”

  “It is spring . . .” I said. “Therefore, it would be in the constellation of the Big Kite. Saurus! The King of Cats!” I pointed toward a star toward the western end of the room.

  “Very good! Now find the Great Ladle.”

  I did so, and we continued in this fashion until I suddenly blurted, “But where is Earth and its moon? And the other planets?”

  He walked to the wall switch and used it, making the faux night sky instantly disappear. “They wander, and it would be difficult to project their progress since it changes each night. The same with our own moons. But we are working on it.”

  His face had assumed a serious demeanor. He pulled Thomas’ stool close to my bed and said, “May we talk seriously for a few moments, Sebastian? Or should I practice calling you . . . Sire?”

  The ghost of his smile traced his lips.

  I must have reddened slightly, because he quickly added, “You did the correct thing, today. I imagine you’ve heard of Parum’s ambitions. Be assured that there are those of us on the Council and elsewhere who oppose them. You have many more supporters than your advisers believe. I would have to say you put a scare into old Parum, who isn’t as smart or clever as he thinks. He has been a good if not great regent, and I have the feeling his time in that role may be coming to an end.”

  “You’re talking of my assuming the throne early?”

  He nodded slowly. I noticed that he was not concerned with lowering his voice, the way Thomas had been. “You must remember, Sebastian, that I helped your mother write the new constitution. She was a brilliant and far-sighted woman. She had every intention of making sure the Second Republic of Mars was successful, and impervious to the kind of corruption that destroyed the first one.” I saw his eyes cloud.

  “Yet you are still worried?”

  He hesitated before answering.

  “I am not a little kit anymore, Newton.”

  Still he hesitated, and then he said, carefully, “There will always be dangers, Sebastian.”

  “Then tell them to me.”

  I thought he was still studying me, but instead I sensed he was studying his own internal catalogue. It suddenly occurred to me who the real rulers and protectors of Mars had been all these years of my growing up – not Parum and his cronies but Newton, and Xarr, and probably others. Parum was the face of Mars, but those like Newton were its beating heart.

  “Tell me,” I repeated.

  “I will tell you something frightening, and then I will tell you something marvelous,” he said “You will doubtless do nothing but learn such things in the next months, especially if you do ascend early. But listen to this, because it has import far beyond even our own republic or our individual lives.”

  It thrilled me – and frightened me – that there would be something more important than the Second Republic of Mars.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  “Just this,” he said. “I will frighten you first, because you are your mother’s son and can handle dire words. I spoke once with you mother of this, years ago. Do you know the various oxygenation stations scattered around the planet, abandoned in the dim past by the Old Ones?”

  “Of course!” I said brightly. I pointed across the room to a table where some of my crude modeling attempts lay. One of them was a diorama of an abandoned valley I had seen in a picture, dominated by a stand of ancient structures, decrepit buildings and a series of towering smokestacks.

  Newton gave a cursory glance at my handiwork and looked back at me with a wry grin. “Yes. You are aware. Well, we may need to rejuvenate those complexes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Mars is losing its atmosphere. It is leaking into space like a pinprick in a child’s balloon. No, that’s not quite accurate. Think rather of our atmosphere as a giant balloon, and millions of pinpricks letting our precious oxygen out.”

  “Well, then, we will get the oxygenation stations working again!”

  “It is not that simple, Sebastian. You see, we don’t quite know how.”

  “What!” This came as a great shock to me. “But you can do anything, Newton!”

  His wry smile returned. “I’m no magician. The fact is, we’ve been studying these structures for years, and have only begun to understand them in a rudimentary sense. The Old Ones were far more advanced than we are, if no wiser. You must remember, Sebastian, that most of our science, including the recent advent of powered airships, was gleaned from the leavings of those ancient creatures. Electricity, motor propulsion, energy production from water dams and aquifers – all of it.” His face darkened. “Even the recent horror weapons were gleaned from hints and artifacts the Old Ones left behind.”

  He must have seen the crestfallen look on my face – after all, he was a hero to me, infallible and in many ways a father figure – for he brightened and said: “And so, that is the bad news! I promised you magnificent news, too, and you shall have it. We have continued our work on the new engines, and think that one day in the not too distant future, we may be able to attain space.”

  I nearly jumped from my cushion. “Space! This has been my dream since I was a kit!” I pointed again to my work table, where various crude rocket ships lay in various states of completion. Most of them were from the popular press.

  Newton walked to the table and picked up a particular model, made from carved junto wood, a sleek thing with fins and a tapered nose. He held it up to the light and studied it. “This is not so far from the truth,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

  “I built it from a picture I saw in a publication.”

  “Curious . . .” Newton said, frowning.

  “Is there something wrong?”

  He turned his attention to me. He smiled, but it looked forced. “Of course not. May I borrow this?”

  “You may keep it!” I said.

  Idly, he dropped it into his tunic pocket and again approached my bedside. He did not sit down.

  “So,” he said, “You have your toy, and I have mine. You will continue to study the heavens until we next meet?”

  I held up his gift. “Of course! And when you return –”

  He anticipated me. “I will bring your telescope. And you and I will study Earth and the stars together!”

  “Hurrah!”

  Newton laughed, and then grew abruptly somber. He scratched his chin and sat down heavily on the stool.

  “There is much I worry about, Sebastian,” he said. “I fear for your safety, and for the future of the world your mother died to insure. You are so young, and I fear a great burden will fall on your shoulders before you are ready for it. Perhaps I shouldn’t say this to one so young, but beware almost everyone around you.”

  “Even Xarr, and Thomas?”

  “They are both good men. Xarr I would trust with my life, and yours, too. But Thomas is young, and picked to do a young man’s job. And as for the rest . . .” He scratched his chin again, looking over my head at nothing at all. “I wish that I did not have to go back to the west, but I must. So let me leave you with this thought to ponder: No matter what happens, I want you never to forget that there are things greater than any of us on Mars. And dreams greater than any of us. My own dreams are what keep me going. Don’t ever forget yours.”

  He cocked an eye at me. “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Good. Now sleep. You look tired. I wish there was more we could do to improve your strength. You have been burdened with this weakness of body since birth, and it only adds to your burdens. But I get the feeling that in other ways, it
has made you strong. As I said before, you are much like your mother. But she had the advantage of a strong constitution, also. She could fight like a devil when she had to.”

  “You mean like my sister?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Amy is a tiger, but I am afraid she is all claws. She never sits still! If I were to try to have this talk with her, she would be hanging from the curtains and shouting a challenge to the world while waving her wooden sword madly in the air!”

  I laughed at this image, which wasn’t far from the truth.

  “Anyway, Sebastian, take care of yourself and be well. I will return as soon as I can. And this time Thomas does not have to come with me.”

  “It is lonely when the two of you are gone.”

  He tucked me into my bedding and then, to my surprise, kissed me lightly on the forehead.

  “I always thought of your mother as my daughter,” he whispered, and I detected his sadness. After I lost my own daughter, I thought Haydn would be with me into my old age.”

  A tear from old Newton’s eye fell onto my forehead, where he had kissed me, as he straightened.

  “Be well – Sire,” he said, still a whisper.

  When he was gone and the door had been closed and then locked by the guard, I lay for a long while and stared at the clouded sky, which had begun to clear. I thought of the many terrible and wonderful things Newton had told me – and then, just before sleep descended, the clouds parted, letting in the light of a bright star, Saurus, I’d wager.

  And next to it, blue and dim and mysterious, and with a small white companion, what hadn’t been shown by my toy, the Blue Lady herself, Earth, floating majestically in the dark.

  Three

  The next morning I was awakened by commotion outside my door. As I called for the guard the door burst open and my sister Amy, along with her friend Charlotte, rushed into the room laughing. The guard, behind them, looked in at me sheepishly and closed the door behind them.

  “Brother!” Amy shouted, jumping onto my bed. She wore a bright blue tunic fringed in deep red brocade. The white fur of her face, with a single patch of amber over one eye, was stained with whatever she had eaten for breakfast. Her deep gold, almond-shaped eyes were bright.

  She held what looked like a real sword up high. “Death to traitors!”

  With a mad cry she thrust the sword down into my middle – and to my horror it seemed to pass right through the bedclothes and into me!

  “Amy!” I shouted.

  And yet I felt nothing.

  She laughed wildly, and pulled the sword back. The mad gleam was still in her eyes.

  “Look! A gift from Newton!”

  She pressed the edge of the sword into the palm of her paw the blade retracted into the handle with a snick. As she pulled it away from her paw the blade shot out again to full length.

  “Ha!” She thrust the sword into me again and again.

  “Amy, I really am tired . . .” I protested.

  She jumped to the edge of the bed and then back up to where I lay. “How can you be tired? You slept all night!”

  Again she thrust the sword into my bedclothes, in the vicinity of my heart. “Die, traitor, die!”

  Wearily, I looked over at Charlotte, who was staring at me strangely.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, giving her a baleful look. “After all, you put me here with your trip wire, didn’t you?”

  “I’m sorry!” she said, to my utter amazement, and then she ran from the room just as Thomas was entering it.

  “Amy!” he scolded, picking my sister up from the bed and putting her on the floor, as she stabbed at him repeatedly with her toy.

  “I will have to talk to Newton about giving you such things,” Thomas said wearily, pointing her toward the door, where her Nanny waited. “Now go to lessons, and leave your brother alone.”

  “Hyyyyahhhh!” Amy shouted like a wild cat, and jumped up on the bed again, driving the toy sword into me one final time before jumping from the far side and scooting around Thomas and out into the hallway.

  The door closed on the commotion ensuing out there, and Thomas straightened his tunic and stood before me.

  “How’s your leg?” he asked.

  “Stiff, but serviceable, I think,” I answered. As I said this I slipped from the bed and tested it. “Not too bad.”

  “Good. Then walk with me.”

  I blinked. “But what about lessons? And my breakfast?”

  “They can wait,” he said mysteriously. “Follow.”

  The door opened again, and I hobbled out after Thomas, who set, I thought, a deliberately brisk pace.

  We stopped, to my thrill, before the doors of the Council Chamber, which I had only officially broached the day before.

  The doors were opened by two attendants. I limped in after Thomas.

  There was something different about the room, which I couldn’t quite focus on . . .

  Thomas strode to the chair the regent had presided from the previous day, and stood behind it. “Well?”

  “Well what?” I said, but even as the words left my mouth I realized what was different in the room – the chair itself was not the one Parum had sat in, but was the royal throne.

  “But –”

  “There was another meeting last evening, while Newton entertained you. He had already cast his vote. Needless to say, it was in favor of your early ascension to the throne.” He smiled. “There was, naturally, one nay vote.”

  “Parum,” I said, as if in a dream. I couldn’t take my eyes off this huge symbol of power, its deeply polished red junto wood, the cushion of royal blue, the embroidered symbols of Martian authority – a round red circle girdled in stars – set into its back.

  “Yes, Parum. Even Rella, who is F’rar, voted in favor. I’m afraid Parum will try to cause trouble.”

  “We will banish him if we have to,” I said. I had slowly made my way, still limping, to stand before the throne. I stood staring at it with what must have been a stupid, blank look on my face. “My mother never sat here.”

  “Yes, she did. When she was little, your grandfather used to let her curl up on it. Xarr told me the story. The King told her never to get used to its feel beneath her. He had just declared the First Republic then, and had dreams of dissolving the throne altogether. It was –”

  “I know the history books,” I interrupted, running my hand over the cushion. “It was what doomed the First Republic, and sent my mother into exile. It was only by accepting her role as Queen that she was able to defeat Frane, who had stolen power in the name of her clan, the F’rar, and establish the Second Republic.”

  “And you now to lead it. The ceremony will be a week from tomorrow.”

  “Very well.”

  I wanted very badly to climb up into that chair, to curl up on its cushion like my mother had when she was a kit.

  But I suddenly knew that my days as a kit were over, as of that moment.

  “Put this throne back into storage,” I said abruptly. I hardly believed that I was saying it.

  Thomas was startled. “Surely you can’t mean that –”

  “Put it away and replace it with a chair just like all the others. That is what I will sit in.”

  “But why?”

  I gave him what I hoped was a level stare. “My mother never would have done anything so ostentatious, and neither will I. If I must rule, then very well, I will rule, but I will not sit higher than any other man.”

  A slow smile came onto Thomas’ face. “You really have studied the constitution.”

  “I know it like I know my own self. It is all I have of my mother, and she died giving it to me.”

  I saw a strange look pass over Thomas’ features, which was quickly banished. He almost spoke but then gathered himself and nodded. “Very well, Sebastian. I will have it removed. I think it a wise decision.”

  I gave him a smile. “I bet old Parum didn’t enjoy seeing it, though, did he?”

  Thomas threw back his head a
nd laughed.

  That night I drew from its hiding spot behind my dresser, where even prying Amy hadn’t been able to find it, my most prized possession. Newton had given it to me the year before, when, as he said, I was finally old enough to appreciate it. He could have given it to me when I was a little kit and I would have appreciated and cherished it, because it had belonged to my mother.

  It was a strange keepsake, a book of the Old Ones, which made it, of course, immensely valuable. But no price could be put on this artifact, the only object in existence with a connection not only to my mother but also my grandmother, who had been a sad woman, from what I was told.

  It was a picture book, of strange-looking Old One musicians. Many pages were missing, and some were brittle, and I always took great care when I handled it lest it dissolve to dust in my hands.

  Three pages in particular were special.

  The first was a portrait of a tall, thin Old One with a completely naked face and a high mane of hair on the top of his head (a feline book had claimed that, in certain Old One ages, this was not real hair at all but something called a wig!) standing next to a musical instrument. One of his strange, long fingered paws rested on its keyboard. The name under the picture was FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN.

  My mother, I had been told, was named after this Old One by my grandmother, just as my mother named my sister and me after two other Old One Musicians.

  My own picture was partially torn away, but showed most of a portrait of a rather fat, smiling Old One, also wearing what looked to be a wig. His name, also partially missing, was SEBASTIAN BACH. And Amy’s picture was of a proud looking woman named AMY BEACH.

  I carefully studied each picture, and the relatively hairless creatures the Old One’s had been. So like and yet so unlike us. There was still so much mystery surrounding their origin, and also their demise. How did they relate to us? Where had they gone, millennia ago? One of Newton’s Science Guild colleagues, who had been studying the Old Ones all his life, estimated that they had died out nearly two million years ago. Why?