Sebastian of Mars

by Al Sarrantonio

  Darwin and I quickly learned that besides our cooking chores, we were expected to pilfer, as this army had very little in the way of provisions. The occasional abandoned (or not) farmhouse was quickly emptied of any eggs and chickens on hand, and after a few days Darwin especially was very good at learning which roots were edible and which to avoid. I had to warn him not to get too good at what we were doing, for it seemed that our own cook lines grew daily, a measure of how bad the rest of the food was. I learned to use Tyron’s gift of spices sparingly. No one bothered us as long as we did our jobs and kept providing something – anything – for these unfortunate fellows to eat.

  But this poor state of affairs did not last long, and within a week, when we had reached the rear of the real army, I began to realize how Frane was able to keep her iron grip on her army. It was a cruelly gray day, with cold rain in the morning which made slick red mud in the afternoon under slate colored clouds and what I thought was the distant boom of thunder.

  I soon learned otherwise.

  Cleft himself came slowly down our line, reviewing his “troops.” He was a short feline with a jutting jaw and chest, and a curious bald spot on his head over his right ear. His fur was as dark gray as the day itself, and his piggishly small eyes swept over us as he walked, paws behind his back. Here and there a cat would be pulled from the line as Cleft pointed to him, and hustled away.

  I tried to look straight ahead when he passed, but he caught my eye, pointed, and said, “Him. And the little runt, too. They’re the cooks, right?”

  His adjutant, a toady in an overlarge red tunic, said, in a mewling voice, “Yes, Lieutenant. The best ones.”

  “Shouldn’t we keep the best ones?” Cleft asked, turning a beady eye on the adjutant.

  “Well, ah . . . General Soames asked for our best.”

  At the mention of the general’s name Cleft stiffened. “It’s Soames we serve now?”

  “Ah, um, yes, Lieutenant, and I thought you would want to please the general and give him what he requests –”

  “Enough! Take them,” Cleft snapped, and moved on, as Darwin and I were pulled roughly from the line and put with the other choices. As our group grew, I noticed that there was a new man in charge of us, with a proper uniform on, a crisp crimson tunic and spit shined boots untouched by mud; he stayed on a small dais that had been provided for him and looked us over as if we were germs under a microscope. His horse, a beautiful jet black, brushed and groomed, stood tethered next to him on its own platform.

  No filth for this fellow, and when I caught Darwin’s eye he nodded.

  “Quite the soldier,” Darwin whispered.

  “Silence in the ranks!” a stout sergeant who had appeared roared. “Silence in the ranks or we’ll beat you all black and blue!”

  That quieted Darwin, and everyone else.

  After an hour of standing like cattle, we were formed into ranks and marched out. I noticed the officer climb his mount without touching the ground, and the horse moved forward reluctantly into the mud, with the officer offering it words of affection.

  The man next to me sniggered at this sight, and the sergeant was instantly at his elbow.

  “You find something amusing?” he roared into the suddenly frightened feline’s ear.

  “N-N-No!” the man stammered.

  “Just what are you?” the sergeant insisted.

  “C-C-Carpenter, sir!”

  The sergeant leaned closer. “Which paw do you hold your hammer in?”

  “W-W-What?”

  “I said: which paw do you hold your hammer in?”

  The line had stopped, but the officer in charge, I noted, rode demurely on, ignoring the commotion behind him.

  The man next to me stuttered: “L-L-Left, sir!”

  “I’m not a sir, I’m a sergeant! Show me your right paw!”

  The man held out his trembling right paw.

  With a swift, grunting but smooth motion, the sergeant drew out his sword and brought it swiftly down in a blinding arc, cutting off the man’s right paw.

  The fellow screamed, watching his severed paw fall to the ground.

  “You’re still a left-pawed carpenter!” the sergeant screamed, wiping his bloody sword on the man’s dirty tunic and then sheathing it.

  The wounded carpenter fell to one knee, mewling.

  “Medic!” the sergeant ordered in a matter-of-fact voice, and in a moment a white-smocked doctor appeared.

  “Patch him up, and get him ready for service,” the sergeant ordered, walking away.

  As he reached the front of the column he screamed, “March!”

  We had soon caught up to the riding officer, who never once turned around. I now had a new man marching beside me.

  Ahead of me, Darwin turned quickly around, and caught my eye, and looked, for the first time since I had met him, frightened.

  We passed other examples of Frane’s terror – felines strung up on high poles, lashed tight, begging for water. To either side of the muddy road, the poles were spaced in equal lengths as far as the eye could see. Some were empty, some held half-decayed dead bodies which were picked at by hovering carrion birds.

  Once, our sergeant walked down our line and shouted, “Most of these fellows were local gentry, some former soldiers like yourselves who sought a new life. Well, you can see they’ve found a new life! Don’t let it be yours! It’s up to you!”

  The day darkened, and rain came, chilled and dripping, and I watched while some of the strung-up prisoners turned their mouths upward, trying to catch a few beads of moisture in their parched mouths. I became used to the sound of mewling wails, and begging for death.

  Somewhere toward the end of the day, as the gray sky was beginning to darken, the sergeant once again walked down the line, pulling out a man here, one there. He plucked Darwin out, and then myself.

  “Cooks, correct?” he snapped, and we nodded and followed him.

  There were twelve of us, and the others were eventually taken away, leaving only Darwin and I.

  The sergeant became almost effusive. “An army marches on its stomach – you’ve heard that, I suppose? Well, you’re lucky fellows. You may be lucky enough to eat some of the Captain’s leavings – after you’ve cooked them for him, of course.” He gave a short laugh, which soured. “The rest of us will be eating the normal filth.”

  We stopped in front of a tent which had been erected, four-cornered, feline-high, with a fringed awning, striped in red and white and clean as snow. The sergeant saluted the junior officer guarding it and turned abruptly, leaving us.

  “Follow,” the junior officer said languidly. Without waiting for a response he turned and we went after him to another tent, this one open-sided, which had been erected a short distance away. We followed him out of the rain and were warmed by a long brazier filled with newly burning coals. Next to it was a table piled with small plucked birds. I counted twenty.

  “The captain would like these roasted, but not dry. Vegetables will be brought later. His guests will arrive at seven sharp, and they will want to eat immediately.

  “What time is it now?” I asked innocently.

  “I have no idea,” he said, without looking at me, and walked out.

  “You have a little more than an hour,” a voice now said, in a bland tone, and Darwin and I turned to see a rail-thin female enter the tent. Her face was a taut as her words were terse. “The vegetables will be boiled, but I’ll attend to most of that.”

  “You are?” I asked.

  “Your boss,” she answered, a flicker of fire lighting up her eyes above her unsmiling mouth.

  “Of course,” I said.

  Darwin had already begun attending to the fowl, and I joined him.

  The sergeant had been correct – we did get to share in the meal, if only to lick the bones that were returned on the greasy plates. Nine officers, at least one of them of high rank, who I found out later was General Soames himself, had entered the Captain’s tent. They were fatter when th
ey emerged, hours later, after much wine had been served. The laughter, I noted, got louder and more raucous as the evening wore on and more wine was opened. In the wee hours of the morning it was over, and Darwin and I were allowed to sleep, under the cook tent and out of the rain, which was a blessing, in the shadow of the cleaned plates and warm coals of the dying fire.

  The next morning I was awakened in the bare light of dawn by the toe of a polished black boot which nudged me as if I were a dog.

  “You,” a voice said, flatly.

  I uncurled and stretched, yawning, as I got up to face the junior officer.

  I stood at attention, but he said, almost yawning, “You needn’t do that. The captain would like his breakfast early today. Keisha will show you.”

  He began to saunter off. “By the way,” he called back, “the Captain sends his compliments to the cook for last evening’s meal.”

  I turned to see Keisha, our boss, staring at me. “You don’t know how good that is for you,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “He hates everything.”

  She would say no more, but Darwin, risen at the prod of my own boot, less clean but more kind, helped me cook a small mountain of eggs and a small trough of hog bacon, while the sun came up, and the mud dried around us.

  We found things relatively easier after that.

  The march continued for three days. Everywhere, evidence of Frane’s iron hand was obvious – burned houses, decimated countryside, knots of huddled, scared refugees with nowhere to go and no one to help them. A knot formed in my stomach at such sights, and I secretly cursed my powerlessness to do anything for them. When I could, I left scraps of discarded meals behind with our refuse, so that they might pick through the leavings and at least find something, however meager, to eat. Even this was dangerous, I knew, but I could not help myself, my growing fury was so strong.

  It became evident that we were moving deeper into a great army. Keisha became more talkative as the days wore on, and told us that scuttlebutt had it that we were heading almost to the front. In the far distance, I saw the frosted caldera of Mount Olympus begin to dominate the horizon. The mountains we were supposed to traverse with Radion and the gypsies – a trip which would have saved us this tedious march – lay like worshiping foothills to the right of its base.

  The great volcano grew daily larger, and it seemed like years since I had left it with Quiff, in his vessel beneath the ocean.

  And now, from that far horizon nearly to my feet, I saw nothing but an unbroken sea of red tunics.

  Our captain’s appetite only grew as we neared the front, and the provisions became better. I could tell because the wines were no longer local, but the best imported ones. As the sergeant had said, an army does indeed march on its stomach, but this stomach was well fed off the plunder of an entire planet.

  The quality of his visitors grew, also (Keisha informed me that the captain was known throughout the F’rar army for his hospitality) and we began to be visited by top-level officers, some of them rumored to be at the right hand of Frane herself. Darwin and I were now but two of eight personal cooks – or chefs, as we were now instructed to call ourselves. We wore white blouses and crisp white caps that were never to be soiled with grease. As with everything in the F’rar army, there was a penalty for this – I watched our newest chef being flogged within an inch of his life for wearing a spotted tunic. That the spots had been produced by a drunk officer tipping his plate against the poor feline as the plate was being held out for a second helping made no difference. There were now three red and white striped tents, one of them a grand affair fit for a circus. It was the day this monstrosity was installed in the midst of our camp that Keisha informed us that we would be serving a very special guest that evening.

  “Prepare yourselves to be extra diligent tonight – if you want to keep your skins,” she said wryly to our assembly. “And you, Darwin,” she said pointedly to my little friend, “be sure your cap is straight on your head – no cocky tilt. I guarantee you someone will notice.”

  “Who’s coming?” a voice said from behind me, and I cringed, because it was the kind of question that could bring violence.

  But Keisha merely smiled enigmatically. “Just do your jobs. And you,” she said to me, dismissing the rest, “I want to speak to.”

  Fear clutched my heart momentarily, but it quickly dissipated when she kept her wry smile. We had not become close in the last weeks, but her harshness had somewhat softened toward Darwin and I. I could not account for it, since we were only little better than adequate cooks and often needed her expert help – but perhaps it was just that, that we asked for assistance when it was needed, instead of floundering like fools and making mistakes, which inevitably caused more trouble in the end. Or perhaps it was that we did as we were told, and were quiet about it.

  “Sebastian,” she said, and to my surprise she put a friendly paw around my shoulder and squeezed, “we will indeed have a very special guest tonight, and I would like you to assist me directly. You and I will serve the main table. I trust I can count on you to do what needs to be done?”

  “Of course,” I said, forcing a measure of enthusiasm into my voice.

  “Good. We will prepare all afternoon, and the fires must be ready by twilight.

  “As you wish.”

  She gave my shoulder a second squeeze, and let me go. “Good. You know, I learned almost everything from my husband, before he died.”

  “Oh?” I said, noncommittal. This was a strange conversation that was growing stranger by the minute, as Keisha seemed to be staring off into space. In fact, in the time that I had known her, this was the first time I had ever seen her almost . . . at peace.

  “May I go?” I offered meekly.

  She looked at me from faraway, as if I had never been there, and said with a slight smile, “Of course. Be here in mid afternoon.”

  I bowed, and left.

  The preparations for our special visit began long before mid afternoon. I had never seen so many guards in my life, and then some of the so-called “foreign dignitaries,” a few of whom I vaguely remembered as visitors to the palace – mostly second functionaries to senators who had probably been murdered by now – began to arrive. Darwin, ever thoughtful, whispered to me as we stacked firewood, “Are you afraid you might be recognized?” but I shook my head.

  “The last time I saw any of these men I was barely a kit,” I said.

  “You act like barely a kit now,” he snorted, and then dodged the playful swipe I aimed at his head.

  And then, at dusk, a hush that made the fur on the back of my neck stand on end came over the entire camp. It was like the hush of dark angels, and a long, sleek motorcar, the first I had seen in months, steam pushing from its rear exhaust, its body crimson as blood, drew up to the main tent, where the Captain waited, bowing from the waist like a manservant. The door on the far side of the vehicle opened, and I saw something red and tall emerge, immediately surrounded by bodyguards, and hustled into the open flap of the tent as the Captain still bowed . . .

  “Merciful heavens,” Darwin said, beside me.

  “Frane,” I breathed, and it was a breath that seemed to drift through the entire camp at once, becoming louder than a whisper:

  Frane.

  Frane herself, the root of all our pain, of all the suffering of our poor planet, the architect of the ruins of the second republic, and the first before it, the cause of everything evil on Mars and in my own family and the families of millions of my people.

  I could not breathe; could not move a muscle – it was as if every breath I had taken, each tick of my life’s clock which had been counted, had all led to this moment.

  Keisha stood before me. “So. Now you know who our esteemed visitor is.”

  I looked up at her, and said nothing. I could not speak, and already the magnitude of what I must do was dawning on me.

  “You have work to do,” Keisha said, with amazing kindness, and the strangest l
ook in her eye, and I said, “Yes.”

  We cooked, and plated, and served.

  There were fourteen courses, and four mail courses. The pheasants were the most tender I had ever seen, brought in by airship, I was informed, precisely for the Queen. Her taster, an oily fellow with yellow eyes and bad breath, stood by my elbow as I cooked and watched everything that went into the preparation. He insisted on tasting each spice (some of them Tyron’s) before I used it, and his greasy finger often reached out to scrape the skin of a cooked goose and dab into its sauce, still hot in the pan, and then put it obscenely into his mouth.

  “I would rather die here, than at her feet,” he said, and somehow made it sound dirty.

  Keisha pushed him aside, and plated the Queen’s food herself as he watched with loathsome, hungry eyes.

  “You will serve with me, Sebastian,” she said, and I noted that she had primped herself and smelled of perfume. Her white blouse was crisp and starched and unblemished. She looked ten years younger.

  The taster struck out his finger and dabbed again at the sauce which Keisha pooled around the perfect pheasant. I now held a platter of tiny asparagus tips which looked too good to eat.

  “Good,” he said.

  “Then get out of our way,” Keisha ordered, and he did so, trailing behind us like a slathering pet.

  A slit-eyed phalanx of guards parted before the tent flap, which opened before us as if by magic. The sound increased ten-fold. There were bright lights at the far end of the tent, and a bevy of performers – two jugglers and three tumblers whose acts intertwined. There was loud music, flutes and a booming drum. Again I thought of the circus.

  We wove through the sea of tables, and now a spotlight fell on the pheasant. I glanced up, and noted a fellow furiously working the contraption as if his life depended on it. It probably did. There were rows of tables all pointing to the main table at the far end of the tent. We slowly made our way up the centermost aisle, each step brining us closer to the evil vision in red who sat in the middle, elevated as if on a podium, attended to either side by servants and hangers-on.