Sebastian of Mars

by Al Sarrantonio

  It was one of the questions that had always intrigued and inspired me.

  This was the kind of King I wanted to be: one who gave his people answers instead of questions, and I resolved that my reign would, hopefully, begin a golden age of knowledge on Mars.

  I fell asleep with the book on my lap, and was only roused, hours later, by the sound of a door quietly opening.

  I knew instantly by the stealthy nature of the sound that it was not Thomas or one of my guards come to check on me. The lamp next to my bed had been extinguished. Through the opening crack in the door I saw the guard, his head lolling, asleep or worse in his chair outside.

  And then the light in the hallway went out, and I could see nothing.

  The door opened wider, squeaking slightly on its hinges. Holding my breath, I angled myself out of the bed, leaving the book behind.

  The door closed behind a figure now inside the room.

  I could feel the presence of the other. There was a heat, a slightly sweet odor, a slight breathing that announced the intruder.

  Was this how my reign would end, before it had even begun, at the hands of an assassin?

  The other stood silent, and now I could make out a slight shape in the darkness as my eyes became used to the dark.

  The shape moved to the bed, to the lamp next to it, and stood still. It was hovering over the bed, its hand moving over the wall to the switch.

  I stepped back, my hands out to shield me, as the lamplight turned night into sudden day.

  “Charlotte!” I cried.

  She froze, staring at the empty bed and the book on it, then at me. “Sebastian!” There was confusion and fright on her face.

  I began to breathe again, but her look of fear didn’t dissipate.

  “Did my sister put you up to this, to scare me?”

  “No. I –”

  She looked vulnerable, something I had never seen this boisterous companion of my sister’s – wild, mischievous, pretty in a tomboyish way with huge brown-gold eyes and light silver fur – look. In recent weeks she had begun to look older, less kitish. “I had to speak to you, Sebastian,” she said.

  “To apologize again for tripping me up? I’m still limping, as you can see.” I took a few steps, exaggerating my affliction.

  “Not that.”

  “Then stop staring at me like you’ve never seen me before! You had the same stupid look on your face this afternoon!”

  “That was when I found out. But I didn’t know who to tell, who I could trust.”

  “What is it?” I lost my flippancy, and walked slowly forward, facing her across the bed. “Tell me what’s wrong. Perhaps I should summon Thomas –”

  “No! I mean, please don’t. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble. But I had to tell you that you’re in danger.”

  I almost laughed, thinking that perhaps Amy had put her up to pulling a trick on me after all. But something about the seriousness and terror in her face stopped me.

  “Then if you won’t tell anyone else, tell me.”

  “You must promise me that my father won’t get into trouble.”

  “Your father! What has Senator Misst done?”

  “Nothing! But I overheard . . .”

  She lowered her voice, and I thought again of Thomas’ warning that things in this room could be overheard. Was I the only one who didn’t believe it?

  We leaned across the bed toward each other, and she whispered, “Yesterday, after I was scolded for tripping you, my father said a curious thing. And it bothered me.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Soon we will not have to apologize to anyone from the J’arn Clan.’ And when I asked him what he meant he got very angry and told me not to repeat what he had said.”

  “That’s it?”

  She nodded. “But it was the way he said it. And I saw him talking to Regent Parum later, and thought perhaps they were plotting against you –”

  She looked down.

  “You thought perhaps they were plotting against me! And heard your father make an off-hand remark about our two clans, which have never gotten along anyway? That’s it?” I laughed. “You would have me put your father on trial, or thrown him in a jail cell, for this?”

  “No!” She looked up at me again, her eyes very wide. “I would never want my father to get into trouble. But Amy is always seeing plots, and this was such a strange thing for my father to say, and if anything ever happened to you I would die because I love you –”

  She gasped, and put her paws over her mouth. “Oh! I didn’t mean to say that!”

  I was stunned. I stood up straight, and stepped back from the bed. Suddenly I didn’t know what to do. I felt self-conscious and awkward.

  “Perhaps you should go,” I said.

  “Sebastian, please, don’t tell anyone!”

  And then she turned and fled, waking the guard in the hall, who woke up with a snort.

  It was a long time before I got back to sleep. The guard was replaced and reprimanded, and I sat staring at the book of the Old Ones without further interest in it. Finally I put it back in its hiding place. I lay back in bed with my paws behind my head, the lamp off, and stared at the ceiling.

  So Charlotte, my sister’s playmate, a rowdy, loud presence in my life since I was a kit, who, just the day before, had strung a wire across a hallway to trip me up, was in love with me. This was a startling and interesting development.

  Those huge brown eyes, that fierce playfulness, that devilish demeanor, were all hiding a burning passion for the royal runt, Sebastian of Argyre.

  And she wanted to marry me, not for political purpose, but for love!

  And if our union was made, it would unite the two most historically contentious clans on Mars, and possibly seal a wound that had festered for centuries, and caused many of the problems on the planet.

  It was an interesting political question, made all the more intriguing by the fact that I had been madly in love with her ever since I was small, and thought her absolutely unattainable.

  An interesting question . . .

  Finally, as dawn was nearly breaking, I slept, a smile upon my face.

  Four

  The first meeting of the Council I presided over, a week later, was quite eventful. First there was the reaction of Parum, who entered the room like a whipped dog to see not only that the throne had been removed but that he sat in an exalted position beside me, his gavel still before him. He lost most of his sour look immediately.

  And then there was Senator Misst, whose face nearly imploded when I announced at the end of the meeting that his daughter Charlotte and I were betrothed, and would be married the following year, when we were both six. The shock on his face, I must admit, gave me a secret pleasure, though I did my best to hide it. After all, this cantankerous, sly eel would soon be my father in law. For his own part, he quickly doused his ire, though he did not smile.

  “So be it,” he said, and his face went as blank as a chalk board, as if he was ready to move on to other things.

  And we did. Thomas read a wireless dispatch from Newton, who reported that things were quiet in the west but that there was much talk of coming trouble. I could tell from his words that he was irked with the imprecision of what he reported – though the very fact that he did report it proved to me that he was worried.

  Next Parum reported that all was calm in Wells, which was of course foolishness. The same sort of unease that Newton commented on was all too evident in our capital city, if Thomas and others of my acquaintance, who actually bothered to roam the streets, were to be believed.

  In the North, Xarr said, things were more out in the open.

  “I wouldn’t call it open rebellion just yet,” he said slowly, reading from a paper which he held painfully close to his squinting eyes – it was now that I noticed with a shock just old he had grown. After tripping over a few words he threw down the paper with a snort and drew a set of spectacles from his tunic which he set on his nose. Ag
ain he squinted, and again he dropped the paper impatiently. “Wrong damned spectacles!” he announced in a voice that challenged anyone in the room to make comment, and then the old warrior produced yet another pair of glasses. This time they must have had the desired effect, because he continued: “As I said, no open revolt but more trouble in the streets than usual. In my home city of Burroughs, which as you know was callously bombed by the F’rar in the last war; there have been lynchings of businessmen and tourists in the streets of F’rar.” He locked eyes with my future father-in-law and said, “This of course has no bearing on the cordial relationships which exist in this room, nor does it in any way condone these heartless and foolish acts. Atrocities, as we know, can be traced to all clans.”

  Senator Misst nodded slightly, and Xarr went on.

  “Republican forces have been dispatched, and martial law has been declared. Parum of course gave consent, in the name of Sebastian. There is much unrest in other areas as well.”

  “It is as if they are all waiting for something,” I said.

  Xarr stopped speaking, and all eyes were on me. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t know why I said that. Please continue, general Xarr.”

  The old general said, “There is nothing more to say. And what you blurted out is true. There is something in the air, though we don’t yet see it.”

  “Perhaps,” beautiful Rella, leader of the Assembly, offered, “we have all caught just a bit of this war fever?” She smiled, but it was a weak one. “Perhaps we are looking at shadows?”

  “One shadow in particular,” Xarr growled.

  There was silence, which Parum finally broke with a tepid knock of his gavel. “Let’s move on to other matters.”

  We did. There were reports of bills before the Senate and Assembly, announcement of the completion of an aquifer project in Hellas which would greatly help that water starved region, tens of other matters great and small. I enjoyed listening to all of them, and found that I had not only a good memory but occasionally had something to contribute.

  Then, finally, we came to another matter:

  “We should now discuss the coming coronation,” Parum said, and the words sounded like they stuck in his throat.

  Rella showed a beautiful smile now and said, “It will be the privilege of the Assembly to provide ceremony and, afterward, celebration, as per the constitution. It will be a special privilege because this will be the first time on Mars this has happened.”

  “Here! Here!” Xarr shouted, banging his fist on the table. It was a louder sound than Parum’s gavel, which the regent used to return order.

  The next half hour, plans in preparation were discussed, until finally Parum ended the meeting. To my surprise, as the others filed out he turned to me and said, with what sounded like genuine feeling, “One week from now you will lift a heavy burden from my shoulders. I thank you for it, Prince.”

  Then he turned and, before I could acknowledge his statement, he was gone.

  Little did I know that very soon, before that burden could be lifted, he, as well as others much more dear to me, would be dead.

  Five

  Coronation day dawned cloudy, with rain threatening.

  I had barely slept. As the sun pushed up into a pink sky it was swallowed by a swiftly moving bank of morning clouds from the west. Soon the day was brown and dank. I stood at the window studying the Assembly Hall which my mother had helped design. A beautiful structure of sandstone, it almost made the day look bright despite the weather.

  Then I felt a drop on my hand, and another, and before long there were cold sheets of water splashing the streets below me.

  “Brother!” Amy said, throwing herself into the room ahead of the servant who bore my breakfast tray. She tore the linen cover away and studied the food, taking what she wanted and pushing the rest aside.

  “Yech! I can’t believe you still eat dog for breakfast, after all these years. It’s not fit for a . . . dog!”

  She laughed at her own joke, and went on ravaging my breakfast even as the servant placed the tray on my bed and went out, shaking his head.

  “Our mother used to eat dog. It was taught to her by Great One, the legendary fighter from the north.”

  “Bah! Why do you always speak about Mother as if we knew her! I’m sure she was quite wonderful – but she might as well be out of a book, like this Great One!”

  “Amy, don’t you ever miss mother?”

  “How can I miss what I’ve never known?”

  “I suppose you’re right. . .”

  Her mouth full of cereal, Amy threw her hand in the air and cried, “And today you are King!”

  I regarded her stoically, and suddenly she ran to me and threw her arms around my neck. “Oh, how I love you, Sebastian! And someday I will be your greatest general, greater even than Xarr, and you will be proud to be my brother!”

  “I’m already proud to be your brother – I think,” I said, and then I laughed.

  She turned back to the breakfast tray, drinking the juice that was there. “It’s too bad Charlotte cannot be at the coronation today.”

  I was turning back to the window, but her words made me freeze. “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t you hear? Senator Misst had to return to the east last night. Some crisis or other. And he dragged Charlotte with him – kicking and screaming, I’m sure. You know how much she’ll miss me. Who wouldn’t?”

  Something froze in me. “Where is Thomas?”

  She shrugged. “Out and about.” Suddenly she ran for the open door. “I’ll see you later, brother King!”

  “Wait!” I shouted. “Amy!”

  Her goodbye echoed down the hallway, and she was gone.

  As if on cue, thunder broke the gloomy sky outside my window, and a flash of deadly blue-white lightning lit the room as if it were full of ghosts.

  The guard outside my door had not seen Thomas, and when he was sent for he was nowhere to be found. Neither was Xarr. The palace was eerily quiet, which was understandable since many of the staff were elsewhere, making preparations for the day’s ceremony and subsequent festivities. Even Brenda, the fat cook, who was always good for a joke or at least hearty conversation, was not around.

  Feeling lonely and a little fearful, with a dread I could not put a name to, I drew a servant’s cloak from its rack by the kitchen entrance, drew its hood up over my face against the rain, and walked out of the palace.

  The few citizens I passed on the street looked preoccupied and hurried. I tried to stop one woman but she only hugged the kit she carried and would not talk to me.

  “I must get home!” she said.

  I made my way to the Hall of Assembly and passed unnoticed inside. It was strangely empty and quiet. Bunting for the ceremony had been hung. The throne lay empty and waiting. My footfall sounded hollow, unwanted.

  I turned and left, passing back unnoticed through the kitchen, replacing the cloak I had taken.

  As I entered my room I heard a chorus of voices in the hallway behind me.

  Suddenly there were guards everywhere. In the midst of them was Thomas, looking frantic. When he spied me he rushed forward into my room with purpose.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, of course. What –”

  He looked frantically around the room as if he expected assassins to rush from every corner.

  “Thomas, what is happening?”

  “I will tell you later.” There was a new look on his face, a mixture of determination which tempered his obvious fright. “Sebastian, you must come with me immediately,” he said.

  “But –”

  “Please! I must insist on no discussion. We will talk of it later.”

  “I must say –”

  “Say nothing!” he nearly shrieked. “Already there were felines streaming into the room behind him – my manservant Fotrel, the fat cook Brenda, many guards with grim visages. I was lifted like so much baggage, and even my yelp of pain when my ankle was put in an uncom
fortable position as I was wrapped roughly in my bedspread and spirited away did not slow their determined flight. I was carried roughly down stairs, and through corridors, and, finally, into a tunnel beneath the palace that I did not know existed. When I tried to speak I was ignored. Finally I was dumped into some sort of carriage, placed into a compartment beneath the seat which was closed on top of me. It was close and hot in the constricted space.

  The compartment door opened, and Thomas’s face appeared above me. There were tears in his eyes.

  “I will tell you this much,” he said. “Your sister Amy and Regent Parum are both dead. War has broken out in the east.”

  And then the door slammed shut above me again, and I was left in darkness, to produce, after shock had given way to grief, my own tears.

  Six

  A bitter dawn.

  We had traveled all night. After hours in the carriage I was transferred to an airship, which headed, I knew from the stars and then the rising dawn, due west. I was allowed to sit with the others on this part of the trip. At one point there was much commotion in the front of the craft, and through the window to the left of my elbow I studied far off lights, but after a while the commotion died down and the lights disappeared.

  The sun was well up when we approached our landing site, a place I knew well from my studies, Olympus Mons. A brief thrill went through me at the sight of the massive collapsed caldera, the mile-high slope of the dead volcano. The lush vegetation at its base quickly gave way to massive plains and cutbacks, all rising gradually toward the sky. The top of the volcano was bathed in wispy gray clouds.

  The airship descended.

  “We’ll land here?” I said to Thomas, who had awakened beside me. His sleep had been troubled. My own had been nonexistent.

  “Nearby,” he answered cryptically.

  The thought popped into my head that Amy would love this view.

  And then I remembered that I would never see my sister again.

  “It’s a bad dream,” I said, to keep myself from crying.

  “It’s all too real,” Thomas said sadly. “My mother was killed, too, and my two brothers.”