Sebastian of Mars

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Die, Sebastian!” she shrieked, and I saw her mad, shriveled face before me and the quick thrust of the long thin dagger in her hand which pierced me in the middle. The blade retreated, red with my blood, and knew that the last card’s prophecy had come true.

  Radion had not been wrong after all – I had been loved by one F’rar woman, and killed by another.

  I felt warm and cold, and fell to my knees, gasping.

  Frane drew back, and held the dagger up. “The thrust itself was not enough to kill you,” she spat, her eyes blazing. “But the blade is covered in the same poison that killed your foul mother. May it comfort you to know you will die the same way.”

  There was a sound at the cave entrance, calling voices, and Frane hissed.

  “Good-bye, spawn. Think of me on your death bed.”

  She gave me one more blazing look of hate, then turned and ran off, deeper into the cave.

  I sank from my knees and collapsed onto my back. I could not breathe. It was as if a warm hand had smothered me, and was driving me down into unconsciousness, while at the same time there was cold all around me.

  There passed what seemed a long time where I saw nothing, and then I looked up and saw Xarr’s face but could not hear his words, though his mouth was moving.

  And then Newton’s face replaced Xarr’s, and I saw him mouth the word, as I closed my eyes to die, “Quickly.”

  Twenty Nine

  I was awake. But wakefulness came suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown. One moment I resided in dreamless slumber, numb nothingness – and then I was fully engaged and alert.

  I lay quietly, staring at something blue over me, like a shield, or the sky of a strange planet. Earth? That was preposterous. And there were no clouds or night stars, only a glassy curve of blueness that I could almost see through.

  I tried to move my head but could not.

  And neither could I move my limbs, which seemed, not leaden, but absent.

  Was I dead?

  And then something moved in the blue canopy above me, a shadow like the silhouette of a god, and I thought I must surely be dead.

  “Sebastian?”

  “Yes?” I answered, as if commanded, though the voice was gentle enough. It seemed to surround me as a god’s voice might. My own voice in kind sounded small and artificial, tinny and weak.

  “Good. He’s responding.”

  This obviously to someone else – another god?

  The silhouette was joined by a second, filling my sky, and I lay in awe.

  “Sebastian, it’s Newton.”

  “Newton!” I cried, though it still kept its tepid tininess, with no increase in volume.

  “Only answer my questions with yes and no, please. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Newton.”

  Something that resembled a gravelly chuckle from the other side, and one silhouette turned to the other.

  “Still stubborn, I see.”

  “Yes,” I responded, and the chuckle repeated.

  “Sebastian,” Newton asked, “can you move any of your limbs at all?”

  “No.”

  “Can you move your head?”

  “No.”

  “Your lips?”

  Startled, I realized that I was answering his questions but that I could not feel my own mouth moving when I did so.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Just yes or no, Sebastian.”

  “If I must. No, then.”

  Another slight chuckle.

  “By the way,” Newton said, “Thomas is here with me. He sends his best greetings, and wants you to know that the Second Republic is safe, and that Wells is almost back to normal. There has already been a meeting of the Senate in the Hall of Assembly, including the new F’rar Senators. Peace has been restored throughout Mars.”

  How long had I been in this condition? Before I could continue to wonder, he answered my question:

  “You have been here” – where? I wondered – “for three weeks. If you hadn’t had partial immunity to the poison Frane inflicted on you, you would not be here at all. But while your mother was carrying you and your sister her litter was passed this partial immunity which she herself possessed. It was gained during the murder of her first kits.”

  Again he answered some of my questions for me, in a clinical way: “In case you are wondering, we are in the realm of One.”

  One! And Quiff was here, I suppose?

  “Quiff is about, and has helped attend you these past weeks. There is more I must tell you, and for a reason. You must stay very calm. Please answer me now. Can you move your right paw?”

  I tried mightily, but felt nothing. It was like I myself was not attached to myself.

  “No,” my tinny voice answered, and some of my frustration must have been communicated because Newton immediately answered:

  “That is all right. All of this will take time.”

  I was silent, brooding.

  “I have good news for you,” Newton said, and I heard in his voice genuine warmth. I wondered what the news might be.

  He continued: “Charlotte is with kit. She’s going to have a litter.”

  Charlotte! Newton’s instructions be damned, I could not help myself:

  “Hurrah! That’s wonderful! My beautiful Queen! Is she here?”

  I went on and on like this, with Newton trying to quiet me, until he suddenly said, “Oh, dear.”

  I heard Thomas’s voice question in alarm: “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing that can’t be fixed,” Newton replied quickly. Then to me: “I’m afraid we must cut this short, Sebastian. We will talk again before too long. Have courage.”

  Have courage? But already I felt myself fading away, the circle of animation around my mind, which was already denied my body, shrinking and shrinking to a tiny dot which then went . . .

  Out.

  Again, it was like I was not there, and then there.

  But this time, there was more of me. I could feel my right paw twitch, as if a current had been put through it, and also my left thigh down to the knee was warm. I knew instantly that this was a good thing, because Newton said, “Ah!” with evident satisfaction.

  “Yes,” I said, to tease him.

  His laugh – hard enough to draw from him in normal times – was long and full.

  “I see you are with us!” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “And ready to obey this time? No outbursts of unalloyed joy?”

  I remembered my wonderful wife Charlotte, and that she was with litter.

  “Yes!” I said, restraining myself from the happiness that flooded through me.

  Through me – yes, it felt as if there was definitely more of me now, as if the tiny circle of being had begun to open out from my head to encompass my body.

  “Can you feel your right paw now?” Newton inquired.

  “Yes,” I said, moving my fingers, though I could not lift it to examine it. My body still felt like lead – but warm lead.

  The silhouette – there was only Newton’s, this time – moved to one side, then back. I could see the arms and hands moving over something tall and boxy.

  “Are you stimulating me by machine?” I asked.

  “Only yes or no, please, Sebastian. It is for your own good. And to answer you this once: yes.”

  “Ah.”

  “Let’s continue . . .”

  These sessions went on, it seemed, forever. I could not really tell how much time was passing, because at the end of each period of stimulation Newton would hit a button, or throw a switch, and I was gone, dreamless, back to whatever place he had dredged me from. When I inquired was happening to me he deferred my questions, and when I demanded as his King that he answer me he became remote and business-like.

  But progress was made, though ever so slowly. Though I still could not raise my paws to my face or see any part of my body, feelings eventually spread from my thighs to both my legs, one at a time, and from my paws to my arms (stran
ge that this would happen in a reverse way from what one would think) and shoulders and finally my neck and face. Pretty soon I was grimacing, and smacking my lips, which made me realize that I was not now, nor had ever been in this condition, the least bit hungry.

  When I asked about this, Newton demurred.

  And though I could work my mouth, my voice, I knew, still did not emanate from my throat but independently. This was merely bothersome in the beginning, when I felt nothing at all, but now it was downright frightening.

  When I asked Newton about this, he tried to demure again, but I persisted, and worked myself up into such a panic that he cut the session short and made me go away.

  When I came back, after heaven knew how many days or weeks, his voice held a different tone than I had ever detected in it: watchful, careful, gentle, and frightened.

  “This is a big day for you, Sebastian,” he said. He sounded as though he was dipping his toe into an ocean that he must now plunge into.

  “No more yes and no?”

  He almost chuckled – but not quite. “Correct. Today we are where we are.”

  “Explain that, Newton.” One thing I noticed with a start was that my voice now issued from my mouth, and not . . . elsewhere.

  “I am whole?”

  “In a sense.

  “Are we going to speak in riddles?” I said, impatient. “I can do that all day, and be just as frustrated.”

  “No, we aren’t going to speak in riddles. But we must speak in . . . well, the way things are.”

  “Another riddle!”

  “Not really.”

  Another silhouette had moved up to stand beside Newton, and I cried heartily, “Hello, Thomas!”

  Newton said, “It is not Thomas.”

  “Then who?”

  “You shall see. But first this, and no more riddles, I promise. You are . . . different than you were, Sebastian.”

  I was filled with terror and elation at the same time.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that. You are not like before, when your body was flesh and bone. To save you at all, certain procedures had to be undertaken. Your . . . body as you knew it is no more.”

  “What am I?” I cried.

  “Do not panic. You are not a monster, or a machine. Much, almost all, of what you were before – your essence, if you will – is intact in this . . . new entity.”

  Entity! Visions of an alien being holding my mind in its body rose into my head, and I began to breathe heavily.

  “Sebastian! Listen to me! You look essentially as you did before. Only your body has been . . . changed.”

  “Show me!” I demanded.

  “Soon enough. But first you must speak with One.”

  Newton’s silhouette moved aside, and One’s was there, before me.

  “Sebastian,” her soothing voice said.

  “Yes! What has happened to me, One!”

  “Listen to me. Only this,” she said, and my terror abated for a moment, before it returned in full force.

  Somewhere there rose a whirring sound, and the blue canopy began to move aside. Its edge moved over me like the moving line of a horizon, replacing soft blue light with another blue light, of One herself.

  The canopy opened completely, and the whirr snicked off, leaving silence.

  “Sebastian,” One said, reaching a hand out. Behind her I saw Thomas and Quiff, drawing back, their eyes wide.

  “I’m so frightened!” I cried.

  “Don’t be,” One said, and as my own paw reached out to touch her own, I saw that my fingers, my paw, my arm were as blue as hers.

  “One!”

  She held my paw in one like my own, and leaned down closer so that her face became visible, the blue haze melting away to begin to reveal her gently smiling visage.

  Our blue halos merged, and her features came into sudden sharp relief, as if the focuser of a telescope had been tuned to perfection.

  I cried out.

  It was a face I would have known anywhere, even in another life.

  “Mother!” I said.