“The Museum of Martian Antiquities contains the history of the native Martian people,” Captain Kol said. “The artifacts are the artifacts of our people. Those great empires, they were the empires of our people. The figures you see laboring in the fields in ancient pictures and the emperors you place on high thrones, they are native Martian, not British or Chinese or French or Turkish. Why should Rothan Gal not wish to study the remains of our civilization?”
“I didn’t mean…” I mumbled.
Except I had. I hadn’t realized it, but somehow I’d thought native Martians wouldn’t be interested in the museum or history. I felt my face turn a bright, burning red. I hated that I hadn’t known better. I was no better than those curators who wouldn’t talk to Captain Kol.
“I thought he was a sailor,” I said.
“He is. How else would he earn a living? None of your universities would employ a native Martian. The museum certainly would not. Besides, there are secrets about native Martian history that we choose not to share with outsiders.”
Putty’s eyes bulged at this. “Secrets? You have to tell me!”
Captain Kol smiled. “When you come to work on one of my boats, Rothan Gal may choose to teach you. But first we must find out what happened to him.”
“I’ll get you an answer,” I promised. “If they won’t tell me, they’ll tell Papa. We’ll find him.”
I owed Captain Kol that. I owed his whole crew.
3
The Clue in the Museum
The Museum of Martian Antiquities was an enormous red stone building near the river, built around the remains of an Ancient Martian temple.
Once, thousands of years ago, there had been temples all along the banks of the Martian Nile. We had passed dozens of ruins on our trip down the river. They had been ridiculously big. I had no idea where they had found enough people to fill them all or even build them. I guessed the Ancient Martians hadn’t figured it out, either, because the temples had collapsed and now there were only lines of broken pillars, looking a bit like snapped-off fingers sticking out of the ground, and giant chunks of wall.
Except for here, where the museum had been constructed from the ruins.
“You know,” I said to Putty as we slipped through the press of bodies on the way to the museum, “you don’t have to come. Miss Wilkins is going to be furious you snuck out. You’ll be confined to the nursery for a week.”
Putty shot me a furious look. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
I missed a step and someone jostled me. “What?”
“You’re always trying to leave me out of things these days.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yeah?” She narrowed her eyes. “So why did you go vine-mining without me? I wouldn’t have gotten fired for messing it up. And why did you go to meet a thief without telling me?”
I felt my cheeks turn hot. “I didn’t go to meet her! And there was no way Miss Wilkins would have let you go vine-mining.”
Putty glowered. “Don’t even talk about her. She never lets me do anything. Anyway, I think she’s a French spy.”
“You think your governess is a French spy,” I said slowly, letting every word fall clearly from my lips.
“Yes! She took my whole collection of experimental photon emission globes. Only Papa and I know how they work.”
“They are rather dangerous,” I said. “And you did break a couple of them in the kitchen while Cook was preparing dinner.”
“I was researching them,” Putty said with dignity. “Even Papa says I understand photon emission and capture devices better than anyone else on Mars. Or he would say it if he thought about it. Anyway, I have a plan to get them back. It’ll hardly cause any damage. Nothing that can’t be repaired. And she is a spy. I can prove it.”
“Right,” I said. “And it’s got absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you haven’t been able to scare off this governess like all the others?”
“Don’t you think that’s suspicious? I’ve been really awful, and she’s still sticking around. I was right when I said those men wanted to steal Papa’s water abacus last year, and you didn’t believe me then. Imagine all the secrets she could be passing on to the French if she were a spy. Napoleon is already the emperor of half of Earth. Do you want him to be the Emperor of Mars, too? He totally could invade if he got Papa’s secrets.”
“She’s still not a spy.”
She glowered. “And you still could have invited me vine-mining.”
I sighed. “It’s not that I didn’t want you to come. It’s just that…” How was I going to explain this so that Putty would understand it? Hell, even I didn’t really understand it. “It’s just that I’ve spent most my life chasing around after everyone else in the family. I’ve never really chosen what I wanted to do. I just end up doing whatever you or Jane or Olivia or Mama or Papa wants me to do. I just want to find out what I want to do.”
“You’re not making any sense, Edward.”
“No,” I said. “No, I don’t suppose I am.”
We turned off the main street, down a narrower street lined with shops and stalls, before coming out onto the wide square in front of the Museum of Martian Antiquities.
From the top of one of the largest columns that fronted the museum, a half-crumbled dragon’s head leered down. I always shivered when I walked under it. I knew it was just a carving, and anyway, its eyes had been worn away ages ago, but I still felt like it was watching me. A large banner had been slung above the doorway reading, “New Exhibition: The Glories of the Emperors of Mars.”
Putty snorted. “Oh, please. That’s completely untrue. There was only one emperor in our tomb.”
In two days, the museum was opening a new gallery stuffed full of the amazing artifacts we’d found in our dragon tomb. Well, most of them. Putty had snuck out a fossilized dragon egg without anyone except me and Freddie noticing. But most of the rest of the stuff would be in there.
We pushed our way through the heavy, iron-studded door, and deafening noise immediately washed over us.
“Look out!” Putty shouted.
I ducked just in time as something swooped by, almost taking my head off.
The entrance hall was in chaos. For a moment, I thought the museum had been attacked. But it was almost worse: Dozens of junior curators were rushing around the lobby in panic, shouting and waving, while a cluster of automatic servants strained to carry a large, elaborate artifact toward a nearby gallery. One of the curators had even put on a pair of pneumatic wings and was flapping around, out of control, almost crashing into the other curators, the artifact, the walls, and us. The automatic servants wobbled, the curators shouted contradictory instructions, and any moment the whole thing was going to end in disaster.
“Hey!” Putty shouted. “That’s our artifact! You’d better not drop it!”
I’d never quite figured out what the artifact was supposed to be. It was made of hundreds of brass balls, each the size of Putty’s fist, all connected together with thin brass rods. We’d found it in the dragon tomb when we’d been taking shelter from Sir Titus. Before I’d had a chance to look at it, he’d smashed it to bits with his excavator. The museum had spent the last few months restoring it, but I still didn’t know what it was, and no one else seemed to, either. It looked a bit like a man crouching, ready to jump up. Or maybe like a bowl of noodles tipped over a sculpture made of marbles.
“Look,” Putty said. “There’s Dr. Guzman. Why don’t you ask him about Rothan Gal?”
I eyed the small, dust-smeared junior-under-curator standing on the far side of the lobby. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“He’s awfully boring. You deal with boring better than I do.”
“Thanks?” I said. Personally, I’d rather have my toes chewed off by a swarm of gator-bugs than talk to Dr. Guzman, but I’d promised Captain Kol. Hell. I gritted my teeth. “If he goes on about his pottery again, though, I’m blaming you,” I told Putty.
We dodged pas
t the struggling automatic servants, ducked the flying curator again, and finally reached our target.
“Dr. Guzman!” I called.
He looked around and rubbed his smudged eyeglasses. “Oh. It’s you. This is all your fault, you know.”
I started. “Mine? What is?”
Dr. Guzman sniffed heavily. “The new gallery. I was all ready to present my pottery collection to the world and then you had to find that dragon tomb and my pottery is forgotten. And now,” he said, looking like he’d bitten into a thorn lemon, “it seems that I am no longer junior-under-curator but junior-under-curator, second class. I have been forced to abandon my own studies to dance around this new gallery. Perhaps the senior curators imagine my pottery will interpret itself? It is a disgrace. Your father is not here, I am afraid. You would think he would be, with this being his gallery, but no. I believe he is in his office.”
“Actually, we had a question for you,” I said.
He brightened immediately. “About pottery?”
“No.”
His shoulders fell. “Oh. Well, out with it. It is not as though I have anything better to do. Not now that I am junior-under-curator, second class. Pottery is of no importance, you see. This is only a museum.”
“Have you been here all week?” I interrupted before he could really get going.
“And the week before, and the week before that. Every day of every week for the last seven years. And now I am second class.”
I gritted my teeth. Every time I didn’t see Dr. Guzman for a few weeks, I forgot how annoying he was. “A man’s been visiting the museum. A native Martian. I wondered if you’d seen him.”
Dr. Guzman’s face twisted. “I do not understand why the senior curators allow such people in. Criminals and vagabonds, the lot of them. But the curators say that the museum must be open to all.” He sniffed again. “If I were in charge, things would be different. Has the fellow been arrested? Did he steal something?”
Putty’s jaw dropped. I pulled her back quickly. We need answers, I told myself. Don’t kick him!
“No,” I said, “I want to know what he did while he was here.”
Dr. Guzman straightened. “How would I know? Why would I talk to the man? I am a junior-under-curator for Third Age antiquities.” He cleared his throat. “Second class. I am not some native guide. Ah … But, I, ah, did have a question for you.” He looked awkward. “Will your sister be coming to the gallery opening?”
“Me?” Putty said indignantly. “Of course I will!”
Dr. Guzman shuddered. “No. No, indeed. Not you. The oldest.”
“Jane, you mean?” I said. “I expect so.”
Dr. Guzman made an attempt to straighten his dusty jacket. “Ah. Excellent. Excellent. A most … perceptive young lady.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I was used to young men falling in love with Jane, but for some reason I didn’t really think of Dr. Guzman as a young man. Or any sort of man at all. More like a forgotten, dusty artifact from an old tomb that no one knew what to do with. Well, Jane deserved this after dragging me out of bed so early this morning.
“She was asking about you,” I said.
“When?” Putty demanded incredulously. I kicked her. “Ow!”
Dr. Guzman brightened. “Ah! Capital! She showed a quite sincere interest in my pottery last time we met.”
“So, um … the native Martian?” I prompted.
Dr. Guzman’s face crinkled in distaste. “That fellow. Well, all I can say is that each time he came, he visited the same gallery and stayed for several hours before he left.”
So he hadn’t just been looking around the museum. He’d come here for something particular. Something important enough to return repeatedly. Something important enough to get him into trouble?
“Could you show me?” I asked.
Dr. Guzman cleared his throat. “My work…”
“And I’ll be able to tell you what Jane said about you on the way,” I said. “She was so hoping to meet you again.”
“No, she wasn’t!” Putty objected. “She—”
“Yes,” I said firmly. “She was.”
Dr. Guzman straightened himself and brushed at his jacket. “Then follow me, young man. And, ah, all the details, if you please.…”
He led us through the museum to a small, long gallery in the west wing. It actually looked more like a corridor with a few display cases shoved in than an actual gallery. Surely there wouldn’t be anything important left here? On the way, I made up all sorts of stories about things Jane had said. I managed to make her sound actually interested and intelligent about Third Age pottery. All I had to do was repeat back everything Dr. Guzman had said to me over the last few months, and by the time we got there, he’d convinced himself that Jane was a genius and absolutely fascinated by his bits of old pottery. He was going to be in for a shock next time he talked to her.
I peered into the display cases as we made our way up the corridor gallery. All I could see were old stone tablets carved with ideograms. Most of them were badly damaged, and only a few had translations above them. Mostly they seemed to be about crops and harvests and bags of flour or other equally exciting things. Life must have been really boring back then if people bothered to carve these kinds of things into rock.
“If it were up to me,” Dr. Guzman said, “I would replace all of these with pottery. I have a very fine jug from the beginning of the Third Age, from the reign of the minor emperor Gel-ib-Nar. It would look quite fine here.”
“You don’t know what the Martian was looking for, do you?” I said.
Dr. Guzman peered down his dusty nose at me. “I have better things to do than follow such people around. Perhaps he was just keeping out of the sun. These fellows are singularly averse to work, you know, and rarely labor in the middle of the day.”
I almost laughed but managed to turn it into a cough at the last moment. Was he serious? I’d have liked to see him hoeing a field in the midday Lunae Planum sun, or hauling bales of cotton onto a boat like Captain Kol’s sailors did.
I moved on to the next display. “What was in this case?”
The small wood-and-glass case had been set into the wall and something mounted inside it. But now it was empty. The irregular shape of the artifact had left a dusty outline against the white board behind it.
“Ha!” Dr. Guzman exclaimed. “I knew it! He has stolen something! I told the curators that we should not let native Martians into the museum.”
I knelt beneath the case. There, on the floor, up against the wall, where the automatic cleaners had missed it, was a dark, brown stain.
I peered closer.
“Look,” I said to Putty.
It was blood. Dried blood.
“He didn’t steal it,” I said.
Rothan Gal had been standing in front of the display case, studying the artifact, and he had been attacked. Now the artifact was gone, and so was Rothan Gal.
“What happened?” Putty said, crouching down beside me.
I shook my head. “Someone attacked him. Or maybe he was just in the way. They obviously wanted whatever was in that display case.”
“So where is he?”
“They must have taken him with them.” But why? Unconscious or a prisoner, getting him out of here without anyone noticing would have been an enormous risk.
I straightened. “I need to know what was in this display case.”
Dr. Guzman heaved a sigh. “It will be in the records. But I cannot find out today. I have already spent far too much time away from my work. You must come back tomorrow.”
Tomorrow? Rothan Gal had already been missing for two days. Every hour that passed reduced our chances of finding him. But I knew Dr. Guzman. If I pushed him too far, he’d refuse to help at all. I dug my fingernails into my palms.
“Have you seen anyone else around this exhibit in the last few days?” I asked.
Dr. Guzman straightened his jacket. “I am a junior-under-curator, second class
. I am not a museum guard.”
“Fine. I’ll tell Jane how helpful you’ve been,” I said, managing to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
I watched Dr. Guzman go, then turned back to the display case.
“It doesn’t make any sense, Edward,” Putty said. “If they wanted to steal something, why not wait until Rothan Gal was gone? He wasn’t here all the time. Edward!” Her hand landed on my sleeve just as the sound of a footstep made me look up. At the far end of the gallery, someone was watching us. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark brown skin, wearing a long, green greatcoat. A wide hat shadowed his face, and his eyes were fixed on us.
“Hey!” I cried out.
The man turned on his heel and strode away. I took off after him.
But by the time I reached the end of the gallery, he was gone. I stared down the corridor. Had he been watching us? If not, why had he fled when we spotted him?
“You lost him,” Putty said, coming up behind me.
I cursed silently. “Come on,” I said. “I want to talk to Papa.”
* * *
Papa’s office was on the second floor of the museum, above the main galleries. When I pushed open the door, he was leaning over his desk, peering through an elaborate arrangement of lenses at a fine device that lay dismantled in front of him.
“Edward!” he said, looking up in surprise, as I shut the door behind us. “Parthenia. Did I forget my lunch again?”
“We were just in the museum,” I said. “We thought we’d stop in to ask you something.”
“Dreadful things have been happening!” Putty blurted, looking delighted.
Papa picked at his cravat. “Ah. How unfortunate. Er … Wouldn’t you prefer to deal with that yourself, Edward?”
I rolled my eyes. Papa was expert at avoiding dealing with problems.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “That’s not why we’re here.”
“It’s not?” Putty said.
“No.”
“Ah. Good. Good. In that case…” Papa frowned suddenly. “Actually, now that you are here, Edward, a peculiar thing happened this morning.”
The Emperor of Mars Page 3